


Long Way Down

by feroxargentea



Category: due South
Genre: Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Case Fic, Extended Families, M/M, Post-Canon, Road Trip, Second Chances, cognitive impairment, lies and untruths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-07-27 08:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20042962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: Eight years after a car crash left him with amnesia, Fraser has rebuilt his life, looking after his sister’s kids. Then unsettling memories start to surface and he starts to wonder whether the people around him have been lying to him all this time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Continuity note: Deviates from canon just before _Call of the Wild_ and takes place 8–9 years later.
> 
> Many thanks to my lovely betas cj2017, alcyone and alltoseek, and to mekare for the lovely [artwork](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/ds_c6d_bigbang_2019/works/20919980)!

The nightmare started the same way they always did. I was trudging alone through an unknown wilderness, snow falling gently around me, blanketing the whole world in the softest of silences. I felt neither the cold nor the wind; I felt nothing at all, a peace of sorts, if an empty one. I kept walking towards the horizon, and the horizon kept retreating from me at the same pace, wrapping me forever in an infinity of nothingness.

Then the world flickered and I was no longer alone, though I hadn’t seen it change. In the far distance a man in a sky-blue coat stood waiting, little more than a speck against the endless white. As I hurried towards him, I saw him turn to me, laughing and holding out his arms, his face a pale oval framed by a fur-lined hood. In the dream I was sure I knew him, although nothing about him was familiar.

I ran on and on, struggling through the whiteness. As I did so, the man’s smile widened, stretching out farther and farther until it became distorted into something inhuman, grotesque, and I understood at last that he was not laughing but screaming at me, yelling at me to run, get away from him, get out.

I slammed my foot against the brake, realising with strange, twisted dream-logic that I had been driving all this time, not running, and that behind my truck there were dark figures bearing down on me impossibly fast. From the passenger seat, Diefenbaker barked a volley of warnings, his paws scrabbling madly against the dashboard. I hauled at the wheel, but the truck was barrelling out of control. It fishtailed, sliding across the ice with terrifying force, heading straight for the blue-coated man.

“Fraser!” he yelled. “Fraser, don’t—”

I yanked at the wheel with all my strength, and the truck rolled, flipping over and slamming down on the spot where he’d been standing.

I was still shouting his name as I woke up, my heartbeat thumping in my ears, my t-shirt damp with sweat. I was lying in my own narrow bed in what had once been my sister’s spare room and was now my bedroom, my safe harbour against all such horrors.

“God,” I muttered, wiping my face with a clammy hand. “Not again.”

* * *

I lay still, waiting for my heart rate to stabilise and my hands to stop shaking. It took me a while to recover my equilibrium, but there was comfort to be found in the familiarity of the room, with its cramped furniture and carefully stacked possessions overlaid with a scattering of children’s clutter, and I was myself again by the time Brody appeared in the doorway, trailing the threadbare remains of his teddy bear.

“Uncle Be-en,” he whined, “I’m hungry.”

“Ah,” I said, suppressing a sigh. There’d be no more rest for me this morning. “Is it breakfast time yet?”

“Ye-e-es?”

I twitched the blackout blind aside. It was daylight outside, but that didn’t mean much at this latitude.

“Are you fibbing?” I asked.

“No,” Brody said, beginning to giggle.

“Do you know what my grandmother told me happens to little boys who fib? The caribou come and steal them away and eat them for dinner.”

“No, they don’t,” he said, with enviable confidence.

“No, they don’t,” I agreed. “Silly Grandmother. Caribou only eat pizza and hotdogs. It’s the wolves that eat fibbers.”

“No, they don’t.”

“They might. Or maybe”—I raised my hands, curled into claws—“it’s the bears! Grrrr!”

Brody shrieked and leapt on me just as I was about to pounce on him, and we were still tussling when Ella stuck her head round the door.

“Shut up, Brody!” she hissed. “You’ll wake Mom and Dad!”

“No, _you_ shut up!”

“Kids!” I said. “My apologies, Ella. It was my fault. Is it breakfast time yet?”

She shot me a long-suffering look, with the degree of superiority only a child could muster. “It’s seven twenty-one.”

“Which means?”

“Which means, yeah, it’s okay to go make breakfast.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Come on, then. Who wants pancakes?”

* * *

Logically I could dismiss the nightmare, but its unsettling effects lingered throughout the day, and once the children were at school I had little else to occupy my mind. As ever, the details had slipped from me as soon as I woke up, and I couldn’t recall who’d been chasing me or why they’d seemed familiar at the time.

I knew, of course, that such dreams were unlikely to bear any relation to true memories. They were mere fabrications, pieced together from crash scene photos and my own thwarted imagination, and reiterated so often in my mind’s eye that I could no longer distinguish which parts might once have been based on reality and which were cut from whole cloth. It was possible my sleeping mind was accessing memories unavailable to my waking consciousness. More probable, though, was that the nonsense was simply nonsensical, and that I was reaching for patterns in meaningless chaos.

When darkness fell, I decided to call Ray for reassurance. There was nothing further he’d be able to tell me about the accident, but it would be good to hear his voice regardless.

“Hey, Benny!” he said, as soon as he came on the line. “How’s it hanging?”

“Good, good,” I said, and we exchanged updates for a while on our respective families, he being in the middle of a house move to accommodate his sister’s growing brood.

“I’m not complaining,” he groused. “I’m just saying, most people with two sets of twins already, they work out what’s causing it and they _stop.”_

“Ah. Well, given that Francesca is particularly attached to her existing infants, I daresay she’s working on the assumption that more is better.”

“More is _louder, _Benny. More is louder.” Ray sighed. “So, uh, what’s eating you? Whatcha really calling for?”

“Nothing,” I said too quickly, and got a pointed silence in return. “Well, I suppose I might be a little under the weather. I had another of those nightmares last night.”

“What, the car crash ones?”

“Yes.”

“With someone chasing you?”

“I think so, yes.”

“The guy in the blue coat?”

“Yes. Or no, he wasn’t chasing me. I think I killed him again, or caused his death, at any rate.”

“Huh,” Ray said. “You seen the doctor about those yet?”

“I don’t like to bother her. It’s probably nothing.”

“Hmm. Seems like you’re getting them more often lately, though.”

“I’m not sure I am,” I lied. “Perhaps I’m just telling you about them more often.”

Ray was quiet for a few moments. “Look, don’t worry about it, okay? It’s probably nothing, like you say. Everyone has nightmares, even normal people.”

“Thank you, Ray.”

He laughed. “I mean, it’s not just your extra-wacko brain going haywire. Nightmares happen. You can’t let them get to you, that’s all.”

“Well, yes, bad dreams are part of the usual human experience. But I feel as if—and I’m aware how absurd this will sound—I feel as if there’s something I’m forgetting here, something I’m missing.” I heard him snort softly in the background. “I know, I know, an amnesiac with memory lapses is hardly headline news. But it feels as if it’s something almost within my grasp, and it’s important. It’s something I ought to have remembered, no matter what.”

“Yeah?” he said doubtfully.

“Yes.” I hesitated a moment before admitting, “I was even considering taking a trip down to Yellowknife and having another look at the accident scene photos.”

“Benny, no! It’s been eight years, they’ll be buried in an archive somewhere by now. You gotta let this go!” Ray paused again, and I could hear his fingers tapping against a hard surface. “You know, most people who get involved in a car crash and get exonerated, they’re relieved. They don’t say, ‘Hey, I gotta find a way how it’s still my fault.’ The police report cleared you of any wrongdoing, case closed. The _official _report, written by_ Mounties.”_

“I suppose you’re right,” I said reluctantly.

“You know I’m right. It was just an accident, okay? An accident a long, long time ago, with no one else involved. You even paid for the goddamn billboard, like the owner told you not to.”

“Well, it was smashed beyond repair, so it was only fair she was reimbursed for it.”

“That’s not the point! She visited you in the hospital, you know that? In floods of tears, like it was somehow her fault you’d ploughed through her fence.”

I bit my lip. “I couldn’t have been speeding at the time, Ray. I _couldn’t,_ unless I’d had some compelling reason.”

He heaved a deep sigh. “I’m not having this argument with you again, Benny. You got nothing to feel guilty about, end of story. Maybe a moose stepped out, maybe you swerved to avoid a family of beavers, maybe you hit a patch of ice like every single person on the goddamned planet does now and then. We’re never gonna know. What matters is that you got a good life up there in Inuvik now. You got a home, you got family. Don’t go stirring shit up now.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Of course it is. So just take it easy, okay? Try living in the present for once.”

I rolled my eyes, thankful he couldn’t see me. He’d given me this advice umpteen times before. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.”

“Great,” he said, sounding relieved. “That’s great. You’re gonna be fine, I promise. Hey, speaking of family, are you still coming down for Thanksgiving? Frannie’s already planning the twenty thousand desserts she’s gonna make for you.”

“Yes, certainly. Is Thanksgiving soon?”

“Two and a half months off.”

“Ah.”

Ray sighed again, and I could almost hear him gathering his patience. “It’s September now, which means it’s early fall, and Thanksgiving is in late fall, if that means anything to you.”

“So that’s...soon?” I asked, frowning in concentration, as if the passage of time would start making sense if only I tried hard enough.

“Yeah, Benny, it’s soon. Listen, I gotta go. Tell Maggie I said hi, okay?”

“I will do. Goodbye, Ray, and thank you for listening.”

“No problem. Look after yourself. Anything you need, I’m always here.”

“Thank you,” I said again, but he’d hung up already, and the line was dead.

* * *

Several more bad dreams assailed me over the following nights, filled with threatening figures I couldn’t put names to upon waking. Part of me hoped I might at last be starting to recover memories from the missing time, but I knew it was likely that that very hopefulness was triggering the nightmares in the first place. Many years earlier I’d been plagued by the ghostly apparition of my long-absent father, instead of the grandparents I’d known and loved. Now it seemed I was to be haunted by people I couldn’t recognise at all.

Regardless of its cause, the resultant disorientation was hard to shake off. I had difficulty adhering to any kind of schedule as it was; Maggie or Stuart would set an alarm to warn me when it was time to leave, but the kids were seldom dressed and fed and ready to go when it buzzed, and we often had to sprint the last few meters to the school gates.

“What time is it now?” I asked Ella, the morning after a particularly unsettling nightmare in which a gang of strangers had tried to force open the doors of my truck and haul me bodily out.

Ella went on combing the knots out of her hair. “Stop nagging, Uncle Ben, there’s loads of time. Pass me that top—no, the purple one, duh.”

Brody elbowed her aside so he could take his turn at the bathroom mirror. Fixing his hair had been taking him a while lately, as he’d adopted the elaborate Sonic-the-Hedgehog look favoured by his current idol, an Oilers star who presumably spent half his life repairing the damage done by his helmet. Most of the boys in Brody’s school did likewise, though, so I usually let him, in spite of his sister’s ridicule.

“You’re such a dork,” she said, pulling a face at him.

“There’s no need to be rude, Ella,” I said. “I used to wear my hair brushed upright too, did you know that?”

Brody giggled. “No, you didn’t.”

“I did. Crew cuts were standard at Depot, and I kept it that way for a long time afterwards.”

“Hey, I wanna see it!” He tugged at my sleeve, still clutching his tube of gel in his other hand. “Lemme see it like that, Uncle Ben!”

I glanced at Ella, but she was laughing too. “Fine,” I said, kneeling down by the full-length mirror. “It’s far too long these days, but you can try. Don’t take ages, though. If you’re late for school again, I’m not taking the fall.”

My hair was indeed too long to stay entirely upright, but between us Brody and I managed to gel it into a weird sort of pompadour.

“You look like a snow demon!” he said, grinning at me in the mirror. “Did you really do it like that?”

“Somewhat like that, yes.”

“Yeah,” Ella said, “back when dinosaurs were roaming the earth.”

“True. I used to be a triceratops.” I touched an exploratory finger to the sticky mess, which broke up into drunken spikes. “Of course, it was much shorter back then. It was black, too.”

“Black?” Brody said, incredulous. “No, it wasn’t!”

“It was. Almost as black as yours. I’ll have to find you a photo.”

“That’s so weird!”

“Indeed.” I smiled at our reflection in the mirror, my weathered cheek against his round, laughing face, and my pallid spines a ghostly echo of his own jet-black tufts. For a moment my vision swam, blurring the image in the glass until a single face seemed to be staring back at me, pale-eyed and pale-skinned and topped with bleached-out spikes.

“Oh!” I said, sitting back suddenly and catching myself on my hands.

“Uncle Ben?” Ella was bending over me, shaking me by the shoulder.

“What? No, no, it’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.” She stepped back, frowning at me. “Was it a ghost? Are you seeing ghosts again?”

“No, no ghosts,” I assured her, getting to my feet and shaking my head to clear it. I’d mentioned to my doctors at some point that I’d been prone to apparitions in the past, and the admission had caused so much consternation that I wished I’d never said anything. “No ghosts,” I repeated, picking up the comb from the bathroom cabinet and flattening my hair with a few quick strokes. “I got dizzy for a second, that’s all. Come on, we need to get going or we’ll be late. Put your sweater on, Brody. I want you both ready, coats on, boots on, bags packed, by the time I’ve finished your lunchboxes. Understood?”

Ella was still scowling. “Fine, but I’m telling Mom as soon as she gets home. I mean it, Uncle Ben. Don’t think I won’t.”

* * *

As I loaded my groceries onto the supermarket conveyor belt, I tried to keep my mind on concrete matters like the contents of my shopping list, rather than on that morning’s apparition, whatever it had been. I’d recognised the face in the mirror only as a fragment of my nightmares, come back to haunt me in a fit of déjà vu: it was the man in the blue coat, the one I watched die almost every night, or who stood and watched me die instead in a heap of crumpled metal. Perhaps it was some sort of vision or flashback, perhaps just a trick of my overactive imagination, but either way there was nothing to be gained from mulling it over. “Live in the present,” Ray had advised me, and I intended to do just that.

“Ben? Ben!”

I blinked and looked up at the checkout clerk. “Sorry, yes, what did you say?”

“Do you have your list?”

“Ah. Yes. Here it is.” I handed it over to the clerk—Sandra, I remembered, her name was Sandra—and she ran a brightly painted fingernail down it, muttering and glancing across at my pile of groceries.

“It says three tins of soup here. You only have one.” She raised her voice. “Hank! Hey, Hank, can you get a couple more chicken soups for Ben? Oh, and another box of Cheerios!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and turned to repeat my apologies to the woman standing in line behind me, who gave me a wide smile.

“No problem, Ben, I’m not in a hurry. You take your time, now.”

I nodded, trying not to blush. It wasn’t unusual for local townsfolk to try to mother me in this way. The irritation at being treated like a child should have been outweighed by gratitude for their kindness, of course, but it left me somewhat awkward, as well as reluctant to form close relationships outside my family. I ought to have become inured to it, but instead my resentment seemed to grow year by year.

At least I hadn’t forgotten my manners. When the shelf-stacker brought the extra items, I made sure to thank him and Sandra kindly before adding them to the heap in my rucksack. After all, it only took an extra second to be courteous.

* * *

Stuart and Maggie were both working late that evening, so Ella had to remind me when it was time to begin dinner preparations. I set a DVD going to keep Brody out of trouble and started making the pastry for an apple pie. The quantities and cooking times had to be guesswork, but then my grandmother, who’d taught me basic cookery, had never measured them either. “Just use what it needs, Benton,” she’d told me, “and cook it until it’s done.”

With the pie made and in the oven, I set to work chopping vegetables for a stir-fry, interrupted now and then by raised cartoon voices and Brody’s occasional laughter from the far end of the room. The movie didn’t sound educational in the slightest, but at least it was only rated PG. Stuart had bought it, in any case, so I could hardly veto it myself.

“Ouch!” Brody said, hissing through his teeth.

I looked up instantly, my knife suspended in midair. “What?”

“He hit him on the head!”

“Ah,” I said, relieved to find he was absorbed in the movie. “Who did?”

He pointed to the gaggle of crudely drawn penguins on the screen. “That one.”

“Kowalski,” Ella added, without looking up from her tablet. “The tall one.” She was just old enough to feign disdain for kids’ cartoons, though she would have protested if I’d stopped the DVD.

“Huh,” I said, my skin prickling. “That’s funny. I think I used to know someone called that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Brody scoffed. “He’s a penguin! There aren’t any penguins in Canada. They live at the South Pole, not the North Pole.”

“That’s true. I can’t remember who it was, anyway.”

Brody was still snickering. “Imagine if you had a penguin name! I’d be Skipper.”

“Or Rico,” Ella said. “That’s a real name, too.”

“No, _you’re _Rico. _I’m _Skipper, I said it first.”

“Kids!” I warned. “No fighting before dinner. And they’re all real names, even Kowalski.”

“No, it isn’t! You can’t be called that, it’s stupid.”

“Brody,” I said, in my best admonishing tone, “remember what we talked about when Emi joined your class? Just because something isn’t English or Inuvialuktun doesn’t mean it’s acceptable for you to laugh at it.”

He wiped his nose on his sleeve and turned back to the television. “I don’t care. Emi’s stupid, too.”

“You could ask the elders, Uncle Ben,” Ella suggested. “If you’ve forgotten someone, I mean. They could check the membership roll for you. They know almost everyone, even the white people.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said, “but I doubt it was anyone local. With a name like that, it was probably back when I lived in Chicago.”

“So ask the elders there, then.”

“Well, it’s a very large place. If you think of this room when the whole family’s here, cousins and everyone, and then imagine the whole of Inuvik full of people standing that close together, all over town, in all the houses and stores and yards and roads—well, Chicago’s like that, only bigger. Far too big to have a membership roll.”

Ella shrugged and went back to her tablet. “Whatever,” she said. “It was just an idea.”

* * *

On my next phone call to Ray, I decided to ask him, just in case. He was sometimes a little impatient at being treated as a backup memory, but I suspected he was glad he could still be of use to me, even at such a distance.

“Ray, may I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said. “Fire away.”

“Do you know anyone with the name Kowalski?”

There was a short silence. “Uh, nope, can’t think of anyone in particular. What’s their first name?”

“I don’t remember, sorry.”

“You don’t remember?” Another pause, and I heard suspicion creep into his voice. “Wait, hold on a minute, is this one of your crazy conspiracy theories? Because I’m not doing this again, Benny, I’m _not. _You gotta get a grip on this, I swear to God.”

“No, no, it has nothing to do with the accident,” I assured him. “It’s just a name I remembered recently, possibly that of someone I used to know, and I hoped you might be able to tell me whose.”

“Yeah? You promise? You’re not gonna go haring off to Yellowknife again, demanding they arrest a whole bunch of people based on some hooey you dreamt up in a nightmare?”

“No, no.” I waited a moment, and when he didn’t reply I added, “I’m sorry, Ray, I know I haven’t been entirely logical about such things in the past.”

“Yeah, understatement of the century.” He exhaled slowly. “Okay, fine. Was this—what was the name again? Kolovsky?

“Kowalski.”

“Right. Was it a guy or a woman?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Great. So was it someone down here in Chicago?”

“I’m not sure of that either,” I admitted. “The name sounded familiar, that’s all.”

“You don’t have a clue who it was? Seriously? It could have been anyone! Neighbour, bus driver, random pretzel seller, you knew every damn citizen in the state of Illinois! Bag lady? Hooker? Goddamn librarian, even?”

“I thought it might have been someone connected with our work,” I said. “Someone we arrested, perhaps, or one of our suspects. But if you don’t remember, then presumably not.”

“I don’t, but then I don’t remember every scumbag in Chicago.” He sighed again. “I guess I could ask Frannie, see if the name rings a bell. She’s like a walking database of known associates these days.”

“Thank you. That would be very helpful, if you could.”

“It’s not gonna mean much without another name to go on, though.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Are you, though? You stay up there in Iglooville too long, your sense of scale gets shot to hell. You know how many Kowalskis we got in Chicago? At the last count, three million sixty-two.”

I laughed. “That’s probably not far off the mark.”

“Think I’m kidding? We got more Polacks than Inuit’s got words for snow.”

“Actually, Ray, that’s something of a myth. The Inuit languages aren’t particularly overburdened with meteorological terminology, in spite of the paramount importance of weather phenomena to the local people.”

I could almost hear him grinning down the phone line. “Yeah, yeah, Mr. Daily Precipitation Report. You really want me to ask Frannie?”

“Please, just in case. I don’t expect her to go searching case files or anything like that, but if she could think of anyone off the top of her head, it might help put my mind at rest.”

“Jeez, the things I do to help you sleep. Fine, I’ll ask her. I gotta go, though, Benny, I’m out early tomorrow on the boat.”

“Right you are. Thank you, Ray, and best of luck with the fishing.” I was still smiling as he hung up.

* * *

Ray called me back the very next evening, sounding smug.

“Okay, so I found your mystery person.”

“You did?” I said, surprised.

“Yup. Frannie came up with a few of them, but the one you knew was Stella Kowalski, assistant state’s attorney while you were working down here. I should have thought of her myself. She was in and out of the Two-Seven every other week for a while there.”

“Stella?” I said dubiously. “As in the play?”

“What play?”

“Ah. Never mind.”

“Well, anyway, you can google her and check, but it’s gonna be her. Frannie couldn’t think of any bad guys, but she ran the name through the CPD staff database and came up with three other suspects.” There was a rustling of paper in the background. “Okay, so we got Joseph Kowalski, booking clerk at the Eighth, who left before you were around; Lesley Kowalski, traffic officer, ditto; and Stanley Kowalski, detective from Vice, retired.”

“Stanley? Now I _know_ you’re pulling my leg.”

“Why?” he asked, sounding puzzled. “That’s what Frannie’s put here. ‘Stanley Raymond Kowalski’.”

“Ah. Well, ‘Raymond’ does sound familiar, although I can’t think where from.”

“Yeah, yeah, very funny. Glad I made such an impression on you.”

I laughed. “Thank you for looking those up for me, though, Ray. I do appreciate it. And I’ll be sure to double-check a picture of Ms. Stella.”

“You do that. You need me to spell the names out for you?”

“Please,” I said, and wrote them down carefully, repeating the letters back to him until I’d gotten them correct.

“There’s a bunch of pictures of the lawyer online, now she’s running for office again,” he said. “And she’s...memorable, if you know what I mean. Blonde and stacked and—”

“Ray!”

“Well, she _is._ And don’t try telling me all women are our sisters, because thank God they ain’t.”

“Amen,” I said, just to hear him chuckle. “Thank you, Ray. I’m glad it was something so simple.”

“Yeah, me too. Okay, Benny, take care of yourself. Speak to you soon.”

“You too. Goodnight.”

* * *

Looking up the names had to wait for an evening when Ella had time to spare from hockey and homework. I wasn’t in any particular hurry, though. Whatever strange jolt had brought Stella Kowalski floating back into my memory, she couldn’t be connected to my nightmares. The one thing that I was sure of, with the illogical certainty so characteristic of the dream-state, was that the threatening figures were all male.

“Stella Kowalski, assistant state’s attorney,” Ella repeated, typing the name and job title into the computer and clicking between the resultant pages with dizzying speed. “Is this her?”

I examined the picture she’d paused on. A conventionally attractive woman in a well-cut business suit stared back at me through sharp blue eyes. She was the archetypal successful lawyer, and a complete stranger to me.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I mean, yes, I suppose it is, but I don’t recognise her.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean anything. You forget a lot of stuff.”

I drew my chair closer, grimacing. “Can you look the others up, please, just in case?”

Ella sighed and pulled the scrap of paper closer. “I guess.” The keyboard rattled under her fingers. “Joseph Kowalski, uh, there’s tons of them in Chicago, but I can’t see one that says police. There’s this one, or this one. Any of these look right?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. Hmm. Try the next name.”

“Uncle Be-en, I’ve got homework to do!”

“Just quickly. Who have you got left?”

“Lesley Ann Kowalski, ugh, stupid name. Nope, I can’t find her. No, no, no. Seriously, this is a waste of time.” She folded the paper over, frowning at my wobbly handwriting. “Okay, last one. Yep, there’s a picture of this one—wait, no, it’s a newspaper thingy, scanned in. Wow, it’s really old. Like, prehistoric old.” She clicked on the article, enlarging it. “Is this any good? Uncle Ben? Hey, are you okay?”

I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “Yes, I’m fine. Could you print that one out for me, please?”

She sighed again and switched the printer on. “Okay, but you’re paying for the next ink cartridge.” She waited while the machine whirred and inched its way across the paper, and then she passed the sheet to me. “It’s kinda smudged, sorry. It’s probably because it’s so old.”

I examined the newspaper article, with its monochrome photograph of a young man in police uniform posing next to a grinning boy. Ella leaned over my shoulder and read it aloud for me.

_“Officer Stanley Raymond Kowalski of the Nineteenth Precinct receives a citation for bravery following his rescue of kidnap victim Tommy Zentek, aged ten. Three suspects remain in custody following the incident last December. Officer Kowalski, who was treated for a gunshot wound at the University of Chicago Medical Center, said, ‘Anyone would have done the same. I’m just glad that Tommy wasn’t hurt. If any members of the public have further information about the incident, we’d urge them to come forward.’” _Ella tapped the picture. “Do you know him? The grown-up, I mean, not the kid.”

“Yes,” I said. “No. I’m not sure.”

“Hey, that’s okay, it’s a really old picture,” she said, in that soothing tone she used when she thought I was about to panic. It was a tone no child of her age should ever have had to learn.

“How old is really old?” I asked.

“Um, the article says January 1989. That’s, um, seven years before I was born. So that kid there, he’s gonna be a grown-up by now. He’s probably got, like, kids of his own and stuff.”

I stared down at the photograph of the smiling young officer, his uniform cap tucked under one arm, revealing pale, spiky hair. Stanley Raymond Kowalski, who had rescued a young boy too long ago for me to grasp how long. I had no idea how I knew him, but I was sure of one thing: his was the ghostly face I’d seen in the mirror.

* * *

“You sure you wanna do this?” Ray said, parking a little way along the street from the address his sister had tracked down for us. “I don’t want you getting your hopes up, that’s all. The guy already told me over the phone that your name didn’t ring a bell.”

“I’m sure,” I said, smiling at him. He’d spent years trying to protect me from physical or emotional harm of any sort, despite all my efforts to the contrary. The accident that put an end to my career wasn’t the first time I’d suffered significant head injuries, and even then he’d reassured me repeatedly that my memory would resurrect itself. “Don’t sweat it, Benny,” he’d said. “We’ve been here before. You get a bang on the head, things go screwy for a while, and then you’re fine.” After a while he’d started saying “Don’t worry about it, it’s no big deal” instead.

“I’m sure,” I repeated. “If Mr. Kowalski doesn’t recognise me in person, I can put the matter to rest. It’ll act as...what do they call it? Closure.”

“Fine, let’s get it over with.” Ray opened his car door. “Oh, and Frannie said he goes by the name ‘Ray’. So don’t freak him out with that whole polite surname thing of yours, okay? Just call him Ray. You can remember that, right?”

“Very funny, Ray.”

I followed him down the street, our shoes leaving wet marks in the early winter frost. In the lazy, overfed slump that always followed Thanksgiving at the Vecchios’, he had been somewhat tetchy about giving up his Saturday afternoon, but he’d been characteristically generous once he’d given way, insisting on driving me there himself.

The address turned out to be a tall, down-at-heel greystone, its lobby dark and unwelcoming. When we stepped out of the elevator on the floor in question, we could hear quiet music playing, punctuated by the deep warning barks of a dog.

Ray halted at the first apartment on the left. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and rapped hard on the door. The music and barking stopped abruptly, and after a moment the door opened a crack.

“Hi,” Ray said. “Ray Vecchio. We talked on the phone?”

A chain rattled, letting the door swing wide, and there he was: the man in the newspaper photograph, or a much older version of him, at least, hesitating on the threshold with a large white dog at his heels.

“Uh, yeah, come in,” he mumbled. He had a local accent, as far as I could tell, with perhaps slight traces of elsewhere. I didn’t recognise his voice any more than I recognised him, but I was getting the same unnerving sense of déjà vu I’d gotten from the online picture.

He hauled the dog into the next room and shut the door on her. Then he gestured us over to the couch and stood opposite it, clenching and unclenching his hands, looking oddly lost, like a stranger in his own home. It didn’t surprise me; I often had that effect on people. Unsure how to treat someone they’d been told had brain damage, they simply avoided any interaction with me at all. I would have appreciated it, though, if he’d met my gaze at least once. It was hard to judge a man who wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Get you a beer?” he asked at last, directing the question at Ray.

“Thanks, I’ll pass,” Ray said. “I gotta drive back.”

“Mind if I have one?”

“Go ahead.”

Kowalski disappeared into what was presumably the kitchen and came back carrying a can, which he cracked open as he sat down heavily in the armchair. In the newspaper’s low-resolution monochrome he’d looked young, blond, hopeful, but although his hair was still styled in the same short spikes, it had darkened to the golden brown of sedge leaves in winter, just touched by frost, and his air of youthfulness was long gone, lost beneath a beard more grey than fair. He was no one I’d ever known, no one I could place, but as I sat watching him drink his beer I had that same weird stab of recognition I’d gotten when I’d seen myself in the mirror with Brody. I was sure he was familiar to me from more than just that article. I simply had no idea why.

He leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping an offbeat rhythm on the can. “So what can I do for you guys?”

Ray tipped his head toward me. “That friend I told you about on the phone, the one with the memory problems? This is him. Benton Fraser, ex-Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He had a couple questions for you.”

I cleared my throat. “I, uh, thought I might have recalled your name from somewhere, Mr. Kowalski. As Ray says, my memory is unreliable, so I was hoping you might be able to tell me where.”

Kowalski turned to examine me, the light from the window catching him full in the face as he did so. In the sunshine he looked older still, though by any objective measure his features hadn’t changed markedly from the photo. It was something about his eyes, perhaps, the air of wariness and resignation where pride and optimism had once shone, or the way his shoulders were bowed with something beyond the mere passage of time. I suppose the same must have been true of me too, of course, to those who had known me before the accident. When I looked at family photographs these days, I hardly recognised myself. Then again, I wasn’t really the same man at all.

“Nope, sorry,” Kowalski said, turning back to Ray. “You said he used to be a cop? I was at the nineteenth precinct for a while, mighta seen him around, but...” He shrugged. “I saw a lotta guys.”

“You might have bumped into him on a case,” Ray suggested. “Or on a training course, or at the range?”

“Coulda done. I don’t remember every guy in the Chicago PD. You wanna give me another clue?”

“You got anything else, Benny?” Ray asked.

I shook my head. “That’s all I recall, unfortunately.” I badly wanted to ask Kowalski if he knew anything about my accident, but there was no way to bring the matter up without sounding unhinged. It hadn’t happened in his jurisdiction. It hadn’t even happened in his country.

His gaze flicked toward me and then immediately back to Ray. “Sorry. Not much else I can say.”

“That’s all right,” I told him politely, standing up and holding out my hand. “It was probably nothing. Thank you kindly for your time, all the same.”

He shook my hand perfunctorily, little more than a brush of his fingers, and turned back to Ray. “Okay, so if there’s nothing else...?”

“Nah, I think we’re good,” Ray said. “Thanks for, you know, being understanding about all this.”

“No problem,” Kowalski said, opening the apartment door and ushering us out. The elevator had just stopped at our floor, and Ray hurried down the corridor to grab it. As I turned to follow him, Kowalski spoke again, addressing me directly for the first time.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I woulda helped you if I could.”

Then he shut his door, and a moment later I heard the chain rattle into place.


	2. Chapter 2

I knew Kowalski was lying. I didn’t know what about, but I could tell he was concealing information of some sort. I’d seen it in his eyes, in the tiny hesitation before he spoke. If he was connected in some way to the crash or to anything else illicit—a cover-up of some sort, perhaps—it was hardly surprising he wouldn’t admit it in front of an ex-CPD detective with a current CPD lieutenant for a sister. Either way, I needed to go back, and go back alone. I didn’t think he was dangerous, and at that point I didn’t much care.

Unfortunately, though, there was no way Ray would allow me to go by myself. Slipping out unnoticed even for a few hours would have been difficult for any guest of the Vecchios, but for me it was impossible. If Ray was overprotective, his sister Francesca was maddeningly so.

Making a return trip to Chicago without their knowledge was the only option, therefore, but it wasn’t going to be easy. I’d been back home in Inuvik for some little while—a few months, perhaps, although as ever I found it difficult to keep track—before I found an opportunity to sit down alone at Maggie’s computer and try to purchase a ticket. Finding the airline page wasn’t too tricky, as the browser’s autocomplete function filled in most of the name for me, but I was defeated by the ranks of dropdown menus in the subsequent pages.

“Whatcha doin’?” Ella asked, wandering up behind me, hockey gear in hand.

“Careful, watch what you’re doing with that stick.” I clicked on a random date and got a list of incomprehensible options that might as well have been in ancient Sumerian. “Bother,” I muttered, clicking the “back” button.

Ella poked at my shoulder until I shuffled along the seat, making space for her. She pulled the keyboard and mouse closer. “Okay. What’s your destination and date?”

“Chicago O’Hare. Soon.”

“Um...next weekend?” She tapped a few keys. “Number of tickets: one. Going via, um, I’m gonna put Yellowknife and then Calgary, because you changed there last time. Window seat, duh. And...there, done! Easy.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. What would I do without you?”

“Starve to death, because you wouldn’t know when it was dinnertime.”

“True,” I said, amused by her matter-of-fact tone. “Although hunger would hopefully kick in at some point, in a spirit of self-preservation. If I fetch my bank card, can you make the booking?”

“Probably, but Mom would kill me. She said not to let you buy anything that’s more than, like, pocket money.”

“I have enough funds to cover it.” I frowned, trying to remember how long it had been since my last trip. “I expect I do, anyway.”

“Yeah, but flights are big things, Uncle Ben. Big, big things.” She splayed her fingers wide, as if explaining this to an infant. “And if you spend all your money, it’s ages before you get any more.”

“Well, I’d ask your mom, but she’s not here.” Being familiar with my sister’s protective instincts, I had of course waited until she was away from home on a long patrol before attempting any of this.

Ella tapped the mouse back and forth a few times, her mouth twisting up. Whatever instincts Maggie possessed, my niece had inherited in full. “She’s not being mean to you,” she said. “It’s just because you’re vun-la-bull, that’s all.”

“Ah. An apt term in the circumstances, given that it comes from the Latin ‘vulnus’, meaning ‘wound’.”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it doesn’t. It means people can hurt you. I know because we had this thing at school about how there are bad people around sometimes, and if they do something we don’t like, we have to tell the teachers or our parents or whatever. I’m vunlabull because I’m only eleven, and you’re vunlabull because you can’t do math and stuff, so you’re like a kid too. Like, you don’t even know what eleven means.”

“How about this,” I said. “If you see any bad people, you tell me, and if I see any, I’ll tell you.”

She leaned into the hug. “Okay.”

“And when your dad comes home, we talk him into letting me buy an airline ticket to Chicago.”

“Uncle Be-en!” She pulled away, smacking me on the shoulder. “Mom’ll freak out!”

“Well, possibly, but that’ll be entertaining too. So tell me, Little Miss Eleven, is it time for me to go and make dinner yet?”

“Depends,” she said, with a calculating look. “What’s for dinner?”

“Pasta?” I offered.

“With bacon and cheese sauce?”

“Deal. Now go get your hockey gear cleaned up before your dad gets home.”

* * *

Ella was as good as her word, and Stuart, although he frowned a good deal, not only booked airline tickets for me but organised US currency too. When the weekend came round, he even offered me a ride to the airport.

Having pulled into the parking lot, he hefted my bag from the trunk and held it out to me. I shouldered it automatically but then hesitated, gazing down at the last snow-remnants melting into the gravel.

“Maggie is due home soon, right?” I asked.

“Yup, due back tomorrow. The kids’ll be fine, Ben, you don’t have to worry.”

“I know,” I lied. Ducking my childcare responsibilities always made me feel guilty as well as apprehensive, no matter how much my sister insisted I didn’t owe her anything.

Stuart pulled some paper wallets from his jacket pocket. “Here are your US dollars. Don’t spend all of them, don’t show them to anyone, and don’t give them away, no matter what sob story anyone tells you. The smaller one has enough counted out to pay for a cab from the airport, plus some for a tip. Make sure the driver gives you some change, okay?”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the envelopes and tucking them away. Money was problematic for me at the best of times; faced with the uniform green of American banknotes, I had no chance.

“Here, take this too.” He handed me a cheap cell phone. “I filled out the address book already, so you don’t need to put the numbers in, just pick an option. The top one’s me, then Maggie, then your friend Ray, and then I’ve put the numbers of a couple of Chicago cab companies. If you need a ride, call them. Anything else, call me or Maggie or Ray. I booked you in with the airline for special assistance, so when you get to Yellowknife and Calgary, just go to the helpdesk and tell them who you are, okay?”

I nodded, touched by his solicitude. He was one of the few people whose kindness never made me feel small.

“Thank you, Stuart. I appreciate all your help. And I’ll be sure to get some change from the cab driver.”

He sighed. “Maggie’s gonna kill me. Okay, get gone before I change my mind.”

I hitched my bag higher onto my shoulder. Then I turned away and set out toward the airport building.

* * *

When I finally reached Chicago, it was another long trek to Kowalski’s apartment building, and I had to ask a series of passersby for help in locating it. Fortunately, I was still reasonably familiar with the city. I might not have been able to read all the street signs, but I did know, as I hadn’t on my first encounter all those years earlier, that its inhabitants were generally kindly souls under their brusque exteriors, and happy to help a lost visitor.

When at last I found the right apartment in the right block and steeled myself to knock, it was a stranger who opened the door.

“Oh, excuse me, sir,” I said, taken aback. “I was looking for Ray Kowalski.”

“Who?”

“Raymond Kowalski. Stanley Raymond Kowalski.”

“Sorry, dude, you got the wrong address.” He went to close the door, but I put a hand out to stop him.

“He was living here until quite recently.”

“Uh, no, don’t think so,” he said. “Place had been empty a month when I moved in.”

“I don’t suppose you could provide me with his forwarding address?”

“Nope, don’t got it. Sorry.”

“Ah. Well, thank you for your time, anyway.”

“Yeah, whatever.” The man raised his eyebrows at me until I remembered to withdraw my hand and let him shut the door. I stood there a moment longer, cursing my luck at finding the one inhabitant of Chicago who wasn’t inclined to be helpful.

“Excuse me, dear!” It was an older lady, calling from a doorway at the end of the corridor. “Who were you looking for, again?”

I straightened my shirt and turned to her, summoning up my most winning smile. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I came to visit Ray Kowalski, but it seems he must have moved.”

The woman eyed me up and down. “He didn’t give you his new address?”

“He might well have done, but unfortunately I have memory problems, so I don’t recall.”

“I see. What’s your name?”

“Ben. Benton Fraser.”

She tapped a finger against her nose. “Ah, I thought you might be, from the looks of you. Come on in, dear, and I’ll get you that address.”

I followed her into her apartment, a time capsule full of fussy knickknacks and patterned wallpapers from a bygone decade.

“I’m sure I had it here somewhere,” she said, rooting through the drawers of a cherrywood dresser. “Ah, here we go.”

She handed me an envelope which to my surprise bore my own name in blue ballpoint. I stared down at the wobbly capitals. Apparently Ray Kowalski hadn’t just left a forwarding address, he’d left it specifically for me. Which meant he must have expected me to come looking for him. He must have _wanted_ me to come looking for him. Which meant...but I couldn’t figure out what it meant, except that whatever his reason for moving house, it hadn’t been to get away from me. I found myself unaccountably relieved by that.

“Can you read it all right?” the lady asked, peering over my shoulder. “His handwriting’s dreadful, bless him.”

“Um, thank you, yes.” I opened the envelope to find a scrap of paper with an address scrawled on it, mostly numbers. I frowned down at the meaningless squiggles. “Would this be a long way to walk?”

“Oh, you can’t possibly walk that far! You’d better take the El. I can write you some directions, if you like.”

“That would be very kind of you, Mrs...”

“Hargreaves. You really are a charmer, aren’t you? He told me you were.”

I smiled back at her. I had always found it odd how readily people in Chicago gave me their trust, much more readily than my own compatriots. No doubt in the old days part of it had been down to the RCMP uniform, marking me out as both exotic and harmless, but even now I could talk my way into most people’s homes simply by appearing to expect it as a matter of course. Of course, part of it was my semi-disabled status, too. I wasn’t above exploiting that, if need be.

Mrs. Hargreaves handed me the directions, along with a packet of sandwiches and a slice of cake.

“There you go, dear, in case you get hungry along the way. Give your friend my regards.”

“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Hargreaves,” I said. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

* * *

Even with the directions, I needed the assistance of several more strangers to find the correct platform and stop. I resorted at last to pushing my hair off my forehead, exposing the lower end of my scar, so that I would be met with sympathy rather than contempt when I explained I couldn’t read.

Turning into the right street at last, I looked around for the nearest person to ask about the house number. A white-haired lady who was deadheading spring bulbs in her tiny front yard looked up as I approached.

“Excuse me,” I said, handing her the slip of paper. “I’m looking for Ray Kowalski. I wonder if you could point out this address?”

She glanced at the note and indicated across the road. “It’s the one on the end there. I’m not sure about the name, though, it doesn’t sound right. He did tell me, but it’s so hard to remember everyone’s names these days.”

“Very hard,” I agreed. “He’s about my age, my height, but with fairish hair and a greying goatee?”

“Yes, that sounds like him. Well, not the beard, but otherwise, yes. He’s new to the neighbourhood, one of those quiet types, you know the sort. People never have time to stop and chat anymore, do they? Everyone’s so busy, I suppose. But he’s pleasant enough. He changed a tire for me a few weeks ago, which he didn’t need to do.”

I nodded, taking the note back. “Thank you for your help.”

Leaving her to her gardening, I headed across the street to the last row-house on the left, steeling my nerves again. As I drew closer, I could hear a familiar barking and see a shadow move across the blinds. I stepped up to the door, my hand raised, but it swung open before I could knock.

“Hello, Ray,” I began.

“Fraser! In, in, in!”

Glancing over my shoulder, Ray hustled me inside, where I stumbled into an open-plan living area and pulled up short. The front door slammed behind me, making me flinch. Before I could turn back, Ray’s dog jumped up to greet me, her forepaws landing hard on my chest and her tail a blur of motion.

“Hey, geddown, Huskie! Go guard the door,” Ray ordered, and she did as she was told, giving my hand a final lick before backing off. “Sorry, Fraser, I guess she remembers you from last time.”

“That’s all right,” I said, with automatic politeness. “I’m fond of dogs.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

He stood there another moment, smiling at me with a degree of wariness but apparently genuine pleasure. It was obvious—unnervingly obvious—that he knew exactly who I was.

“Anyone follow you here?” he asked.

“Um, no, I don’t believe so. Your neighbour over the way pointed out the right house, though.”

“Jesus. Way to be sneaky, Fraser!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, puzzled. “I had to ask someone.”

He went to the window and peeked through the blinds before turning back to me, the sunshine casting bright stripes across his tall, lean form. He was dressed much as before, in dark jeans and t-shirt, but he was clean-shaven now, which gave him a rather more youthful appearance—or perhaps that was just down to his smile, one so infectious and charming that I couldn’t help smiling back, despite my bewilderment.

“That’s okay, it’s cool.” He let the blinds snap shut and then came over and hugged me, slapping me on the back. “Man, it’s good to see you! You got my note? I left you a note.”

“Yes,” I said, taking an involuntary step back as he released me. “Yes, your old neighbour Mrs. Hargreaves passed it on. She seems very fond of you.”

Ray was beaming so wide it hurt to look at him. “Yeah, I was hoping she would. I didn’t know if you’d turn up again, it’s been six months already so I’d kinda stopped hoping, but I figured I’d done everything I could. And here you are!”

“Yes, here I am,” I agreed, rubbing at my eyebrow. “So, um, I take it you do know who I am.”

“Huh?”

“I was fairly certain you’d recognised me last time,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “although I wasn’t able to recall where from.”

“Uh...what...”

“The amnesia, remember?” I prompted.

He laughed. “Come on, Fraser, cut the crap. It’s just us here.”

“Unfortunately it’s not crap.”

“Seriously, quit kidding around!”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not joking.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “Cut it out, okay? You’re freaking me out.”

“Ray, please listen to me, I’m not joking. I did tell you so at the time.”

“Yeah, but that was...” He gestured round the room, still trying gamely to smile. “I mean, that was just an act, ’cause Vecchio was standing there listening, so we had to play the game, right?”

“This isn’t a game, Ray. None of this is a game.” I bent my head and parted my hair, revealing the full extent of my scar. “He told you about my injury when he first contacted you, I believe.”

Ray had gone so pale that I thought he might actually be sick. “Yeah, he said you’d been hurt, but I thought—I mean I, uh…”

“You assumed he was exaggerating the effects of it? I’m afraid not.”

“Shit. I...”

I saw him close his eyes and steered him over to the dining table before he could fall. He sat heavily in the chair that I pulled out for him, covering his face with his hands.

“God, Fraser, I...I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

I went over to the sink and fetched him a glass of water. “Here,” I said, sitting down opposite him. “Take a minute. I expect this is something of a shock for you.”

Lowering his hands, he glanced quickly at my scar and then away, ignoring the glass. “Were you... Was that really...”

“Was it really what? From a car accident? Yes, some years ago. I have no memories of the period immediately before it, which presumably includes whatever time in which I became acquainted with you. I would very much appreciate it, therefore, if you could enlighten me as to the circumstances of our acquaintance.”

Ray was visibly shaking; I had to fight the urge to reach across the table and still his hands.

“You seriously don’t remember me?” he asked.

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Not at all?”

“No. I remember your name, I think, but that’s all.”

He gave a sort of convulsive nod, swallowing hard.

“Before we go on, though,” I said, “let me assure you that because of my cognitive impairment, no court of law would ever accept my testimony over yours. You’re free to tell me the truth, therefore, given that I wouldn’t make a reliable witness against you.”

He dropped his hands and stared at me. “Wait, who the fuck do you think I am? You think I’m some kind of fucking _criminal?”_

I’d been considering that possibility, but his reactions rang true. I shook my head quickly. “Not at all. I didn’t mean to imply any wrongdoing on your part.”

“Well, I’m not, okay? Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this. Jesus fucking _Christ.”_

I waited in silence for a while, giving him time to grasp a situation I’d come to terms with years ago. My instinct was to reach out and comfort him as I might have with one of the kids, but I couldn’t tell how he would take it, or what words I might reasonably use instead. I clasped my hands in my lap and waited.

At last he sniffed hard and rubbed his face. “Okay. What exactly did Vecchio tell you?”

“About what?”

“About, uh...forget it, never mind. So you got this, what, this gap in your memory?”

“Yes, a time-specific loss. I’m fine apart from that,” I added, trying not to sound defensive. “I’m perfectly aware of everything before and after that period.”

“So what’s the last thing you remember?”

“Before the accident?”

“Yeah, before that.”

I took a deep breath; I’d recited this account too many times already. “I’d been stationed here in Chicago for some years as a constable in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, attached as liaison to the Canadian consulate, but I’d recently been transferred back to Canada. I was a few kilometers outside of Thunder Bay when my rented pickup truck went into an uncontrolled skid and rolled off the road. That’s what my colleagues told me afterwards, anyway. I woke up in the hospital and don’t actually recall leaving Chicago.”

“Not at all?”

“Not at all.”

“So the last thing you do remember is working here? With Vecchio?”

“Yes.”

“Shit. _Shit.”_ Ray scratched at his jaw, leaving faint red marks. “And he’s not with the CPD anymore?”

“No, he took retirement a few years ago. He’s a management consultant now.”

“Right. Whatever the hell that means. And you guys are still friends?”

“Of course. I’d count him as the closest friend I have, aside from family.”

That made Ray wince. “Okay, look, I gotta tell you some shit about him, and it’s not his fault he didn’t tell you any of it, so don’t freak out, okay?”

“Very well,” I said, my heart sinking.

He stared at me until I nodded agreement as well. “Okay, so, some of that time you’re talking about, he wasn’t there for it. I mean he wasn’t _here,_ in Chicago. The Feds had some high-stakes Mob thing going down in Las Vegas that he got parachuted into, so I got sent to the Two-Seven instead, so anyone who went looking for him would still find him there. Or find_ me_ there, being him.”

“I...” I paused, trying to make head or tail of this. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“He went deep undercover, okay? And to make sure no one clocked him missing, I filled the gap. That last couple years you were here, that wasn’t him, that was me.”

“That... No, I’m sorry, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Ray shrugged. “Made sense at the time, I guess. They didn’t give us all the details ’cause it was way too fucking dangerous, and Vecchio musta never explained it to you afterwards either, ’cause you were better off not knowing. But apparently you don’t know how to leave things the fuck alone, so...” He shrugged again. “Hi, I’m Ray Kowalski, ex-Chicago PD, and your ex-partner.”

“We were colleagues?”

_“Partners,_ Fraser. I was Vecchio, remember?”

I gave him a hard look. “No, I don’t. Would he corroborate any of this?”

“Yeah. Or I dunno, maybe? He must have been told to keep shtum like I was, plus I never even met him till that one time six months ago. I’m guessing Frannie didn’t tell him who I was even then, ’cause he didn’t seem to have a clue when he brought you round to my place. I hadn’t heard a word outta anyone in the CPD for years till she called me, and all she said then was ‘play dumb’. They didn’t even tell me about your accident, which you know I would’ve—I was gonna say I would’ve done something about, but I don’t know what I could’ve done. But I would’ve _been_ there, at least. You gotta know that much is true.”

I hadn’t known it before, but looking at his expression, I knew it now. I was inclined to believe the rest of his tale as well, unlikely as it sounded. Law enforcement partnerships meant something well beyond mere friendship. Ray Vecchio had driven up to Thunder Bay to wait by my hospital bed; it was strange to think this man would have done the same. I had no idea what I would have done if he had. Introduced myself to him, perhaps?

I held out my hand now instead, and after a moment’s hesitation he shook it.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ray Kowalski,” I said.

He gave a strange, choked laugh. “God, you’re such a freak. Fuck it, you know what, this is way too much to deal with on an empty stomach. You hungry? You still like pizza?”

“Yes I am, and yes I do.”

“Okay, then. I’ll make us dinner.”

Dusk had fallen by the time he’d produced a dough base from the freezer, added various toppings, and baked it until the cheese was bubbling and fragrant. The scent brought his dog wandering back in from the hallway, and when Ray sat down at the table she laid her head on his thigh, drooling hopefully. The pizza proved worth the wait. Even the pineapple, which I’d wondered at when I saw him chopping it up, didn’t seem out of place among the sweet onions and peppers. I made a mental note to try it out on the kids at some point.

Several slices in, Ray had calmed down a good deal and seemed almost cheerful again, leaning back in his chair and watching me with a fair approximation of a smile.

“It’s so weird. Eight years gone and you look exactly the same. I mean”—he waved his hand over his head, still clutching his bite of pizza—“you look kinda like a photographic negative of yourself, but other than that…”

“Oh, the hair?” I said, taking another slice for myself. “I like to tell people it turned white overnight after the accident, but the truth is it just crept up on me over time.”

“Yeah. Long time.” He stroked the dog’s ears, and she rested her chin on his knee. “So whatcha been doing? You still up in Canada?”

“Yes, in Inuvik.”

“Inuvik. That’s good, right? I mean, it’s home. You still doing the Mountie thing?”

“No, I had to take medical retirement,” I said, hating the way my voice caught on the words. “My literacy skills weren’t up to scratch, for one thing. I did eventually learn to read and write again, but not well enough for any position with a significant bureaucratic element.”

“God, I didn’t... Vecchio didn’t tell me that.”

“Well, as I say, I did relearn. I was lucky. My injuries could have been considerably worse.”

He cocked his head, regarding me more closely, his smile uncertain now. “But you’re okay? I mean, you’re doing okay?”

“Yes, thank you, I’m fine. I do some volunteer work from time to time, and I have family up there, so I’m fine.” I hesitated; it was disconcerting to have to recount more than the bare minimum of personal information to a stranger.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s good.” I could sense his curiosity, but he was polite enough—or perceptive enough—not to push.

“And you?” I asked. “Are you still with the Chicago PD?”

“Nah, I quit that years ago. I’ve done a lot of jobs since then. Delivery work at the moment, parcels, that kinda thing. It’s okay. Keeps me busy, helps pay the bills. I got my pension, anyway.”

“I see.” I floundered for a moment, wondering what else to ask. We must have known each other quite well at some point, and there were probably other people in his life after whom I should ask—a girlfriend, perhaps, or children—but I was wary of blundering. “How do you like your new house?” I enquired instead.

He glanced round the room. “It’s okay. I’ve moved around a lot. Got used to being on my own again.”

“Ah. Was that not the case before?”

He laughed, a shade bitter. “Nah, I was married for a long time. And then I wasn’t. And then, uh...you really don’t remember?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“It’s just, it’s so fucking weird.”

I nodded sympathetically.

“I guess there’s a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t know anyway,” he said. “Stuff since I last saw you, stuff I woulda told you about if you’d been there, maybe. It might’ve been nice to have had someone to tell. Someone human.” He petted the dog, making her squirm and bury her nose against his thigh. “And yeah, there were other people, on and off. There was this one woman I dated for a while, she wanted me to move in with her, but I said no. She broke up with me next day.”

“Oh,” I said awkwardly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Nah, it’s okay, it wasn’t that big of a deal. It wasn’t like she was the love of my life or anything. If it’d been just her on her own, I probably woulda said yes, ’cause she was, y’know”—he made vague curvaceous gestures with both hands—“nice. I liked her. But she had kids, so I said no.”

“You don’t like kids?”

“Of course I like them,” he said impatiently, as if that was something I already knew. “But I was going into the whole deal already thinking it wasn’t gonna work out long term, and you can’t do that to them. Can’t say, ‘Hi, I’m your new stepdad, I’ll be gone soon.’ Not fair on them.”

I nodded. “That’s an honourable line to take.”

“That’s one word for it, yeah. Then there was another thing for a while, two or three years. I did move in that time. That was good while it lasted, but by the end we were just, y’know, fighting twenty-four-seven. I came home one day and found a bonfire of all my stuff in the front yard, so that was that. Finito.”

“A _bonfire?”_ I echoed, shocked.

He shrugged. “Some people walk out, some set fire to shit. Comes to the same. Anyway, it’s just been me and Huskie since then. I got her in the divorce, sort of.” He ruffled the dog’s fur again. “And she was worth it, weren’t you, girl? Worth all the fights and everything.”

“I can see that. She’s a beautiful dog.”

“Yeah, she’s gorgeous. Looks, personality, the whole caboodle. Love at first sight.” He yawned and stretched out his arms, rotating them until they cracked. “Hey, it’s, uh, getting kinda late. You got a place to stay tonight? I mean, you can stay here if you want.”

I glanced at him; the offer seemed genuine enough. “That would be kind of you, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No, you can…” He paused, frowning. “You can have the bedroom. I’ll go change the sheets.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t hear of turning you out. I’ll be fine on the couch.”

“Um...okay.” He stood up and gestured towards the hallway. “I’ll just, uh, fetch you some blankets, then.”

“Thank you.”

While he was gone, I wandered round the room, examining the few pictures on the walls: moody cityscapes and grainy monochrome photographs of objets trouvés, mostly. He was gone for some time, and when he returned he was in shorts and a fresh t-shirt, his face and neck still damp in the creases. He held out a pile of blankets and a toothbrush still in its packaging.

“I didn’t know if you’d brought one,” he said awkwardly. “I left a towel out for you in the bathroom. Top of the stairs, turn right.”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

He scratched at his neck. “Okay, so, uh, sleep well.”

“Thank you,” I repeated, when he didn’t move. “You too.”

“It’s, um, it’s real good to see you again,” he said in a rush.

I nodded. “Likewise.”

“Yeah. Okay, then. G’night, Fraser.”

“Goodnight.”

I washed up and then made myself comfortable on the couch, half curled on my side, with an old tartan blanket tucked round me. The long journey and the welter of emotions had left me exhausted, but I lay wakeful for a while nonetheless, wondering what my partnership with this disconcerting stranger had been like, and how he might have described it if I’d been discourteous enough to ask him point-blank.

For a moment I had a sudden shiver of déjà vu, before recalling it was the other Ray of whom I’d asked the same question, after one of my previous blows to the head. “I thought we were friends,” I’d said, hopelessly confused, and he’d smiled at me and assured me that we were. I wished now that I’d confided in him about Ray Kowalski, instead of sneaking here by myself. It would have been a relief to have had someone I trusted, someone with whom I could have talked things over, and who would have reassured me that everything would somehow turn out fine.

* * *

I slept soundly at last, free for once of my nightmares, but at some point I was woken by a tapping sound. Ray was peering round the door and rapping softly on it with a knuckle, his head cocked. I blinked and nodded at him, and he wandered into the living room and slumped down in the armchair opposite me. The dog—Huskie, I remembered he’d called her—followed him in and curled up protectively at his feet. It was still the middle of the night, as far as I could tell. I quickly gave up trying to make sense of the numbers on the clock, but there was no sign of dawn outside.

“Can’t sleep?” I asked him.

“Nah. I never sleep good these days.”

The light was too dim to see him very clearly, but he did look exhausted. Chronic sleep deprivation might explain why he seemed so much older than in his picture. Then again, perhaps he simply _was_ that much older. My grasp of time was too unreliable to be sure.

“My damn brain wouldn’t shut up,” he said. “Too busy trying to figure stuff out. Like, if you walk out that door in the morning and I don’t see you again for another eight years, maybe never, which one am I gonna regret more: telling you stuff or _not _telling you stuff?”

“Oh.” I sat up a little, rearranging my blankets and wondering whether it was the details of his work or his private life he was wishing unsaid. “Well, that isn’t really something I can answer for you, Ray, although a lot of people towards the end of their lives report that it’s the actions not taken that they regret most.”

“Hmm.” He shifted, stretching his legs out over the dog and tipping his head back against the seat cushion. He was quiet for so long that I was beginning to think he’d gone to sleep, and I was more than half inclined to do so myself. Then he drummed his fingers on the armrest, startling me fully awake. “Fuck it, look, here’s the thing. I’m not Ray Kowalski.”

“Oh,” I said, baffled. “I see.” He’d raised his head and was staring at me, waiting for more of a response, but I didn’t have a clue what else to say.

“I mean, I _am_ him as much as there is a him, but there isn’t really a him. They made him up in case anyone went poking into stuff, which you did, back then and now, so, uh, nice job by the cover guys, I guess.”

“Oh,” I repeated, still at a complete loss.

“Yeah. Kowalski was Stella’s name, but it was handy for a job, so she let me borrow it. I guess I look kinda eastern European. Good enough, anyway. I can even speak some—a little Polish, a little Russian, they taught me all that shit, enough to pass as second generation, whatever they needed.”

“They? The Chicago police department?”

“Nah, the only time I worked with the CPD was those two years with you. I’d heard all about it from Stella, though, so that made it easier. They set up a profile for me at the nineteenth precinct, made it look like I’d transferred in from there, in case anyone didn’t buy the whole Vecchio thing.”

“Oh.” I frowned, trying to make sense of this. “I saw an online article recently, an old newspaper feature about you receiving a commendation for rescuing a young boy. That’s how I found you, actually. I believe it mentioned your precinct.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Frase. They make this shit up, use stock photos, whatever. You gotta have background, that’s how it works.”

“He wasn’t real, then, the child?”

“Kid actor, probably.”

“I see,” I said, feeling stupid. “You didn’t rescue him, then.”

“Nah, I’m not that kind of hero. Sorry, Fraser. The stuff I did, they weren’t gonna advertise.”

“Then, if you don’t mind me asking, who _are_ you?”

He grimaced. “James Stanley McLeod. But I never liked ‘James’, so I go by ‘Stanley’.”

_“Agent_ McLeod?”

He leaned back on the cushions again, closing his eyes. “Back in the day, yeah.”

“And you weren’t my partner,” I said, my voice harder than I’d intended.

“I was, for a while.”

“And everything else you told me earlier was lies.”

“Not everything. Not the stuff that mattered.” He exhaled slowly. “Look, I didn’t _wanna_ lie to you, okay? It was just, you gotta dig a trench round stuff, you know you have. ’Cause normal people, you can’t get them to take it seriously. You tell them there’s bad guys out there, but they don’t get it, not really. My mom and dad, they came to see me while I was undercover as Vecchio, and they kept getting my _name_ mixed up. All the shit I’ve done, all the shit _he_ musta done, and they couldn’t even get my _name _right.” He raised his head and shot me a rueful smile. “And yeah, before you start in with the lecture, I know that’s why we do the job in the first place, so civilians don’t gotta deal with that shit and they can sleep sound at night, yada yada yada. But if they can’t even imagine it, they don’t get how dangerous it is. So you dig a trench round them. You lie, and you lie, and you keep them safe.”

Despite my anger, I knew he was right. I hadn’t worked undercover myself—not for any substantial period, anyway—but I’d gone to considerable lengths to protect my friends and family from the more distasteful aspects of my job, as far as I’d had any friends and family to protect back then. It made me wonder just how much Ray Vecchio had kept from me over the years. I’d never asked him exactly what he’d done before we met, and I suppose I’d never known the right questions to ask about the missing time prior to my accident, either. I’d simply assumed that whatever he’d done was needful and right, and I believed that still. If he’d kept the truth from me, it was for my own protection. I couldn’t help feeling a selfish stab of relief, nonetheless, that I wouldn’t be meeting him face to face anytime soon.

Ray Kowalski—or James Stanley McLeod, I suppose I should say—was slumped back in his chair, his eyes half-closed, all the tension drained from his posture. It made no real difference to me who he was or who he’d ever been, but his own relief was palpable. The last of my irritation drained away; it was impossible not to feel sympathy for him.

“You’ve been waiting a long time to tell me all this,” I said.

“Yup.”

“Do you feel better for it?”

“Yeah. Fuck, yeah. I probably shouldn’t, given that I’ve broken every fucking rule in the book, but _damn_ it feels good.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep now?”

“Maybe, yeah.”

I waited, but he made no move to get up.

“Ray?” I said at last.

“What?” he muttered, without lifting his head.

“What should I even call you?”

He laughed, a soft, sleepy laugh. “I dunno, Fraser, what should I call _you?”_

I thought about it before answering. I could barely recall the last time anyone had called me by my surname. Everyone back home used my forename or some variation on it, and even the Vecchios had long since picked up the habit. To my brother-in-law and his relatives, surnames held a strange duality, as a stipulation imposed upon them by colonial incomers but at the same time a chance to reclaim the Inuvialuit names lost in the long-gone missionaries’ zeal for baptism, as well as an assertion of their people’s humanity: a name, not a number. For me, my father’s surname was a symbol of his courage and duty, his arrogance and failure. But when Ray used it, it felt right, as if a missing piece of my identity had fallen into place.

I looked over at him, fumbling for the words to tell him that, but I saw he had dozed off where he sat. For a while I lay still, watching him breathe, level and steady. Then I rose carefully, tiptoed over to his chair, and tucked my spare blanket around him. He didn’t stir.


	3. Chapter 3

When I awoke the next morning, Ray’s chair was empty, but I could hear the shower running and there was a scattering of sweat-dampened jogging gear on the hallway floor. I dressed hurriedly, washed my face at the kitchen sink, and had the blankets folded up by the time he came downstairs, towelling his hair and humming.

“Sleep okay?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Shower’s free.”

“Ah, so I see. Thank you kindly.”

I took my time showering and then joined Ray at the table, where he was alternately gulping cereal and flipping the pages of a magazine. Taking the seat opposite, I watched him turn another few pages before looking up.

“So,” he said, passing me the cereal box with studied casualness, “what’s the plan?”

I filled a bowl with bran flakes, added milk, and stirred it slowly, recalling his words the night before: _“If you walk out that door in the morning and I don’t see you again for another eight years, maybe never...”_

“I have a flight back this afternoon,” I said, passing him the ticket so he could read the time. “I’ll probably need to leave for the airport fairly soon.”

He studied it for a long moment before summoning up a smile. “Right, sure. Need a ride?”

“That would be kind of you, if you don’t mind.”

“Uh, nope. No problem.”

He clattered his bowl into the sink without another word and headed off upstairs. I sat finishing my breakfast, listening idly to the water running, the thunk of drawers and the rattling of keys, as I considered my options. Ray had told me the truth last night, I reminded myself. He hadn’t needed to—he’d been forbidden to, in fact—but he’d chosen to do so all the same. He’d trusted me, and I badly needed someone to trust in return.

I was still hesitating by the time I’d washed the dishes and packed up my duffel bag. Ray reappeared and gestured me towards the front door with a degree of impatience.

“Come on, we gotta make tracks,” he said, jangling his keys. “The van’s in the lockup down the street.”

“You have a van?”

“Told you I was a delivery guy, didn’t I? I use the bike when I can, though. They need something couriering fast, they call me for that.”

“Ah,” I said. “I hope you’re careful. Chicago isn’t a particularly safe place for cyclists.”

“Not that kind of bike, Fraser! I say fast, I mean _fast._ I got a new Harley, got her last year. I can show you, if you got time?”

“Of course,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. I owed him for his kindness in letting me stay, after all. “I’d like that very much.”

That got me a hesitant, flickering smile, as if he hadn’t wanted me to see how pleased he was. “All right. Come on, then.”

He locked the house behind us, leaving Huskie on guard, and I followed him a short distance down the street to a row of steel-doored garages, their paint peeling off in long strips. He opened one of them and pulled aside a heap of plastic sheeting next to a white van, revealing an angular, heavyset motorbike with its workings stripped bare like a half-eaten carcass, remarkably unattractive to anyone lacking his evident enthusiasm for horsepower.

“Ta-da!” he said, glancing at me self-consciously, half embarrassed by his own pride.

I made suitably appreciative noises. “Very nice. A most impressive piece of engineering.”

He patted the bike. “Lemme start her up. You think she looks pretty now, wait till you hear her purr.”

Straddling the machine, he tinkered with it until it roared into life, the sound deafening in the confines of the garage. “Purr” would not have been the term I’d have chosen.

“Hey, we could take this instead of the van?” he suggested.

I couldn’t think of a convincing excuse quickly enough, nor—if I was strictly honest—did I want to quash the hopeful look in his eyes. “Certainly, we could do that.”

“Toss me one of those helmets, then. Black one’s newer, you can have that.”

I took both helmets down from the garage shelf and passed him the red one. He trundled the bike out onto the pavement, locked the garage behind us, and got back on. Having strapped my bag firmly across my shoulders, I climbed onto the seat behind him and buckled my helmet into place.

“Ready?” he asked. “Hold tight.”

I did as requested, and we set off to O’Hare in a cloud of exhaust fumes. I’d thought we had plenty of time left to get there, but with every block we passed, Ray sped up a little more. Soon he was darting through the back roads, cutting past the snarl-ups, seemingly trying to set a new urban land-speed record.

I took a tighter grip on his jacket. My arm muscles were starting to ache from the effort; nerve damage from the car crash made such sustained flexion difficult. Ray’s delight in speed was infectious, though, and I couldn’t help catching his exhilaration.

Ahead of us, I saw a stop light turn amber and braced myself for Ray to brake, but instead he accelerated hard.

“That’s a stop light, Ray,” I shouted, but the words were lost in the roar of the engine. He kept going, darting through the light a split-second after it switched to red.

I was so busy holding on that I didn’t even notice the truck turning left across the intersection until it was directly in our path. Ray must have seen it at the last second, or else heard the deafening blast of its horn. He swerved wildly, cutting a wide, desperate arc round it, a hair’s breadth from impact. He gunned the engine again, and another burst of speed sent us barrelling through the junction and into the safety of the empty street beyond.

I bent my head down as far as I could, letting out the breath I’d been holding. My palms were sweaty, and my initial burst of exhilaration was turning to nausea. Ray meanwhile was whooping, weaving the bike from side to side, exultant.

“Stop it, Ray,” I called, but he didn’t react, so I tugged hard on his arm. For a moment he didn’t seem to notice that either. Then he slowed down, turned off the road into an empty parking lot, and skidded to a halt on the loose gravel.

“Good call!” he said, jumping off the bike.

“I’m sorry?”

He pulled off his helmet and pointed upwards. I followed his gaze, ducking instinctively as a jet came roaring overhead, its belly so low it seemed almost to graze Ray’s fingers. He laughed in delight.

“Right under the flight path,” he yelled. “Best place to see ’em land.” Shading his eyes, he turned to watch the plane hurtling down towards the airport.

I looked away. I hated planes. I would never admit it or let it affect my travel plans, but I hated them. My first serious head injury had been caused when the light aircraft I’d been travelling in at the time crashed nose-first in the wilderness. I’d made a full recovery, or so I’d been told. But if I hadn’t—if it had altered me in some fundamental way—would I have been able to tell? Would my friends and family have admitted it to me? I knew how they humoured me, the one-time wunderkind whose main occupation these days was accompanying kids to hockey games whose scores I couldn’t even follow. So much of my life felt like a pretence, an act, and there was no way to be sure whether it always had. Any certainty had vanished the moment that first impact scrambled my mind. And, lacking any other culprits, I chose with deliberate illogicality to blame airplanes instead.

I could feel my fingers tingling weirdly, the tips of them prickling. Just adrenaline, I reminded myself, shaking them out. I swung my leg over the bike and removed my helmet with hands I couldn’t keep entirely steady.

Ray squinted down at me. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just needed a break.” I stood up but had to grab the bike to brace myself.

“Oh, _shit.”_ Ray took my helmet from me and guided me over to the low wall of the parking lot. “Siddown, Frase. Shit, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

I perched on the wall, attempting a reassuring smile. “I’m fine, Ray. Don’t worry.”

He squatted at my feet and scowled up at me. “Yeah, right. You’re always fine.”

“I really am quite all right. It’s the adrenaline rush from the bike ride, that’s all. It’s a perfectly normal adrenergic response to speed, triggering increased heart rate and peripheral vasoconstriction. There’s no need to be concerned.”

Ray didn’t appear to have listened to a word of this. “God, I’m so dumb,” he said, striking himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand. “Why don’t I fucking think before I do this shit?”

I pulled his hands away before he could hit himself again. It was a long time since I’d seen anyone try literally to beat themselves up.

“Please don’t worry about it. It’s refreshing, actually, not to have allowances made for me. Given that I don’t even recall my car accident, I don’t have any particular traumatic memories associated with it, or with driving in general. Not coherent ones, anyway,” I added, with a prickle of guilt at the half-lie. “People back home in Inuvik, they..._coddle_ me, I suppose would be the word. With the best of intentions, of course, but with the result that I’ve become unused to, well, anything approaching the statutory speed limit, never mind beyond it.”

“Huh. So I basically just threw you off of a cliff.”

“Essentially, yes, and my body reacted as such. But I’m fine, really.”

“Yeah? Are you gonna be okay to carry on to the airport?” He peered up at me through wisps of hair squashed flat by his helmet, and I felt a surge of affection for this kind, absurd man—or perhaps it was still just the post-adrenaline euphoria talking.

“Of course,” I said. “Maybe a little more slowly, for the sake of other road users, but I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, good. That’s good. It’s not far now. Well, obviously it’s not far. So...are you gonna let me have my hands back?”

I looked down at them. “Sorry, yes, of course.”

He stood up, retrieved my helmet, and handed it to me. “Come on, Frase. I’ll try not to scare the crap outta you this time.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, coming to a sudden decision. “May I ask you something first?”

“Sure.”

“You and I were partners, correct?”

That got me a wary glance. “Uh-huh.”

“So I must have trusted you implicitly.”

He snorted. “Nah, you always thought you knew better than me.”

That surprised a laugh out of me. If he’d simply said yes, I might have taken that ride to the airport. As it was, I laid my helmet back down on the wall and spoke before I could second-guess myself.

“Ray, I’d like to ask for your help.”

He shifted his weight, blinking down at me. “Uh, okay. What with?”

I poked at the ground with my boot, tracing curves in the gravel. I spent half my life having to request assistance, but the sting of it never lessened.

“The accident I was in...well, I’m not convinced it _was _an accident, so I’ve been investigating the circumstances. Attempting to investigate them, anyway, but it’s difficult with limited literacy and no transport. I’d appreciate some practical help with it. If you could spare the time, that is.”

When I forced myself to look up again, Ray seemed more baffled than anything.

“Um, okay?” he said. “I mean, yeah, I guess, but I’m not a cop anymore. You know that, right?”

“I’m aware of that, yes. I haven’t gotten anywhere with the official investigative pathways, in any case.”

His eyes widened slightly at that. “Uh, okay. You’re gonna have to tell me the whole story, though, ’cause I’m way outta the loop here, buddy.”

“Fair enough.” I gestured to the wall, and he sat on the corner across from me, stretching out his legs until his boots scuffed across my carefully traced lines.

“So you had no joy with the cops, huh?” he said. “They close your case? Figures, it musta been a long time ago. I thought Vecchio was helping you with it, though. Kinda sounded like he was.”

I hesitated. “He did assist me in tracking you down, yes, but that was on the understanding that I let the matter drop afterwards. It’s probably best if he doesn’t know I’m still investigating.”

“’Cause he doesn’t want you getting mixed up in shit? I kinda got that vibe off of him, the whole overprotective thing.”

“Yes, but also because he believes I’m obsessed with the accident, that it’s a pathological fixation.” I saw Ray’s incomprehension and tried to explain. “He thinks my tendency to doubt the official account is connected to my injury, that it’s a symptom of cerebral damage.”

“Could it be?”

“It’s possible.”

“But you don’t wanna assume that.”

“No.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I said, surprised. “That’s it?”

He shrugged. “What? If you think something’s hinky, it’s probably hinky. Could be your brain whajamacallit talking, but you’ve always been crazy as a loon, so that’s not new.”

“Hm.” I chewed my lip, wondering how candid to be. “I ought to point out in the interests of fairness that most people share Ray’s opinion.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not most people.” He shifted, propping one leg on the wall.

“You know, you remind me a good deal of him,” I said.

“Fuck off, I’m nothing like him! I’m a damn good actor, that’s all.” He grinned at me, shark-bright and suddenly nothing akin to Ray Vecchio at all. “Okay, so whatcha got?”

“I’m sorry?” I said, flustered as much by his smile as by the abrupt change of topic.

“Evidence, Fraser. You got some, right?”

“Oh. Well, actual evidence is somewhat hard to come by.”

He shifted again, impatient. “You told me you, uh, ‘rolled your pickup a few miles outside of Thunder Bay.’”

“Kilometers,” I said, disconcerted to hear my words quoted back to me like a police statement, “but yes.”

“And?”

“And I lost control, on a flat road in reasonably clement weather, with no witnesses and no other vehicles involved. Full copies of the accident report were sent to my detachment back in Yellowknife, where my sergeant checked them over personally and agreed it was an accident.”

“And you can prove it wasn’t?”

“Not exactly _prove,_ no, but I’d never broken the speed limit before. I’d never had so much as a parking ticket.” I caught Ray’s expression. “I know, I _know _that isn’t proof. But I wouldn’t have been driving dangerously unless something forced me to. You knew me back then, Ray. Wouldn’t you agree that was out of character?”

“Hmm,” he said noncommittally. “Local police do forensics?”

“Yes, but they didn’t find anything conclusive.”

“Any CCTV?”

“Not on that road, no.”

“Nothing? They do a wider sweep, five-ten miles out? Store security, gas stations, anything?”

I shook my head. “It was a long time ago. Surveillance technology was in its infancy.”

He grimaced. “Shit, yeah, that musta been back in, what, 1999? 2000? So I guess you’d be looking at videotape at best, probably taped over weekly.”

“Exactly. And I was detained for a considerable period in the hospital. By the time I returned to the Northwest Territories and scraped together enough of my marbles to start wondering what had really happened, it was too late. I queried what I’d been doing halfway across the country, but all that my colleagues could tell me was that I’d taken some leave, claimed I was visiting Inuvik, and then hired a pickup truck and driven southeast instead. Presumably I drove rather than flew because I had my dog with me, but by the time I tried to retrace my route, the trail had gone as cold as—”

“Franklin’s ass,” Ray supplied.

“Quite.”

He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up randomly. “So the million dollar question is, what the hell were you doing in Thunder Bay? You know anyone there?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but obviously,” I gestured at him, “I might have had other acquaintances I’ve since forgotten.”

“Shit. Right.”

“But after what you told me last night, I’m wondering whether it might have had something to do with Ray Vecchio. You said he’d been working undercover with the Mob. If he’d gotten into some kind of danger as a result, if I’d found out something about it, I would have driven any distance, done anything to try and protect him.”

Ray rubbed irritably at his shoulder. “Yeah, I know, but you got any kind of lead on that? Anything to link him to the place?”

“Nothing that comes to mind, no. If I kept any sort of log back then, it wasn’t among my personal effects by the time they were returned to me. My journal was missing, which was suspicious in itself.”

“Nah, you stopped writing a journal when Vecchio left. I guess you had too many secrets to keep.”

“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “I didn’t know that.”

“Right, so you just assumed someone stole it!”

I frowned, annoyed by his tone. “I did warn you most people think I’m paranoid, Ray.”

He held his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. Let’s assume you’re not. Let’s assume...what? Where do we even start?”

“With these, perhaps.” I pulled the clear plastic evidence bag from my jacket and handed it to him. “The paramedics found them in my jeans pocket when they extracted me from the wreckage.”

“You took this out of Evidence?”

“Borrowed it, shall we say. They closed the case, Ray.”

He examined the bag, turning it over and over, although there was nothing much to see, just small scraps of paper, crumpled and yellowed with age: an old receipt from a motel in Sault Ste. Marie, and a handwritten note bearing a single name and phone number.

“Lemme guess, disconnected?” he asked. “Burner cell?”

“Yes.”

“‘Sidorczuk’,” he read aloud. “You follow up on that?”

“I tried, but I drew a blank. The name meant nothing either to Ray Vecchio or to any of my colleagues, and there was no one of that name in the local telephone directories. The desk clerk at the Sault Ste. Marie motel remembered me when she was shown my picture, but she could say only that I’d stayed the night, had no visitors that she knew of, and been no trouble.”

“Hmm,” Ray said, frowning. “So you’d just come from the Sault. Which is, what, a port city, a border city, not a huge place. Got any connections there?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I’d been there on police business before, apparently, but that particular case had long since been closed.”

“Right, the whole _Henry Allen_ thing.”

“You heard about that?” I asked, surprised. I didn’t remember it myself, of course, and I no longer had official access to the CPD case files, but Ray Vecchio had shown me several newspaper cuttings detailing the gold heist, the stricken freighter, and the subsequent salvage operation. “Yes, I suppose you would have seen it in the papers. Ray came out of it rather well, actually. The case made quite a splash, no pun intended.” I glanced at Ray Kowalski, but he didn’t look amused.

“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered. “That fucker gets the credit for everything.”

“For what—_oh!”_

Ray squinted at me. “Right. That was me. It was all me. Me that you dragged onto the _Henry Allen._ Me that you dragged onto the _Bounty._ Me that nearly drowned three times over, chasing after you and your fucking pirates.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “Sorry,” I offered, inadequately.

He snorted softly. “No, you weren’t. And here we are in 2008, chasing pirates all over again, ’cause apparently I never fucking learn.” He flipped the evidence bag over again, until I had to fight the urge to snatch it back off him. “Are you gonna lose that flight if you don’t take it?”

“No, I could postpone it for a while.”

He tapped the bag against his knee a few times and then handed it back to me. “Come on, then,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Where to?”

He swung his leg over the bike and kicked it into life. “Nah,” he said, without looking up. “You’ve known me more than a decade now, Fraser. I figure at this point you either trust me or you don’t.”

I stood there a moment longer, my evidence bag in one hand, my helmet dangling from the other. Then I tucked the bag away in my inside pocket and went to join him. He was right, after all. For good or ill, I’d long since made that choice.

* * *

Dusk had fallen and we were back at Ray’s house before he gave me any explanation. I’d waited outside the Union Hall while he made enquiries there, and then waited again outside a series of rundown tenement blocks while he went to “kick some heads in”, as he put it. The whole process had taken most of the day, but in spite of my mounting frustration I hadn’t once questioned whose heads or why he didn’t want me present in the encounters. Apparently this meant I’d passed some sort of test, because he was humming cheerfully as he unpacked our takeout cartons onto the kitchen counter. Either that, or head-kicking (literal or otherwise) had a worryingly buoyant effect on his mood.

“So,” he said, forking the carton contents onto plates, “I didn’t find your guy, but I did find a guy who knows where your guy might be.”

“My guy?”

He handed me a plate heaped with a random assortment of Chinese food. “Yeah, you know, Joe Sidorczuk, like on your scrap of paper. He’s a slippery fucker, though. It’s one thing knowing his name, another to get a fix on where he’s at.”

“You’ve _heard_ of him?”

Ray stuck an entire battered king prawn in his mouth and chewed it for a while before answering. “Everyone’s heard of him, assuming it’s the same guy.”

I stared at him. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t need to know.”

I closed my eyes, trying to visualise calmness the way the rehabilitation team had taught me. “I’m not a child, Ray,” I said, as levelly as I could manage. “I have a degree of brain damage, but it’s neither necessary nor helpful to treat me as intellectually impaired.”

Ray grimaced. “I wasn’t. It’s just...it’s just habit, okay, not telling people stuff. Feels safer. And anyway, you’re not gonna know Sidorczuk unless you got links to the freight business, which you don’t. Last legit post I know of, he was operations manager for Haltek, shipping ore to Detroit. That was years back, though.”

“He was?” I said. “Is that what they told you at the Union Hall?”

“Nah, Frase, I know this shit. I spent more than a year as a shipping clerk in an outfit running guns through the Sault. It was one of my first UC gigs with the Feds, back when I was still new to this stuff.”

“Good Lord. Surely that was a dangerous assignment for a rookie.”

“Yeah, I nearly died of boredom. Learned a lot about freighters, though. That’s what made it so fucking weird with you on the _Henry Allen_—well, one of the things. At least I don’t gotta pretend I don’t know squat about lake boats anymore.”

“Ah. I suppose that would have been a challenge.”

“Yeah, but that’s what undercover is, right?” he said, through a mouthful of noodles. “Fifty percent winging it when you don’t know what the fuck is going on and fifty percent acting dumb about the stuff you do know.” He stabbed his chopsticks at me. “Not that that was hard with you around, Constable Goddamn Wikipedia.”

“Private Citizen Wikipedia, these days,” I said ruefully. “And ‘winging it’ is standard operating procedure for amnesiacs. Once upon a time I could have recited the estimated travel times between all the major ports on the Great Lakes, but they’d be meaningless to me now. As for the freight industry in general, my knowledge is superficial at best. I could perhaps delineate on a map the more common bulk shipments of coal, metal ores and so on, but I never did have much grasp of the economics thereof.”

Ray gave me an odd look. “Maybe you could just, like, pretend to know.”

“Why? Would that help?”

“Uh, it’d freak me out less, yeah.”

“Very well,” I said, puzzled. “As you wish.”

He pushed his plate away, grinning. “Anyway, there’s not a lot of money in shipping these days. More road freight than ships or rail, plus the whole manufacturing sector’s slowing. You gotta go big or branch out to survive, which means the usual shit: narcotics, firearms, people trafficking, that kinda thing.”

“People trafficking?”

“Yeah. I mean, you can fake work visas, sure, but there’s people it’s easier to bring in without paperwork. Bums, drifters, anyone who’s been smacked around enough that they’re looking for a new life. You ship them in, take their papers off of them, stick the guys in the steelyards and the girls in the strip clubs. It’s just a sideline, makes the freight pay.”

“Surely they could just leave again,” I pointed out.

“And go where?”

“To us! To the police, I mean. We’d protect them and provide whatever help they needed.”

“Nah, think about it, Fraser. All the same kinda shit’s gotta be happening up in the Territories too, right, even if the details are different? Happens everywhere. Those kinda people, they go running to the RCMP?”

I frowned. “Perhaps not. Not very often, anyway.”

“No, because we’ve never given them reason to trust us. And anyone who snitches, they’re gonna be taking a long walk off a short pier.”

“They might be able to swim.”

Ray rolled his eyes. “Okay, then, Mr. Literal, a long dive off a high gunwale. Middle of Superior, Huron, any of them, you’re not gonna be making the shore. Plus the water’s at, what, forty degrees or so, this time of year? Hypothermia’s gonna get you while you’re still pulling your Speedos on.”

“Hmm,” I said. “And the lake never gives up her dead.”

“Exactly. No body, no case.”

I pushed my own plate away. “So—”

“So we gotta run this lead, right?” Ray interrupted. “It could be something or nothing, but you wrote it down, so it musta been something. Best word I got on Joe Sidorczuk, there’s a lieutenant of his hiring muscle for a crew running lake boats through the Sault. We go up there, I can maybe put the screws on the guys on the ground, see what’s what, get to him that way.”

I studied his expression, hesitating. I knew I ought to ask for whatever contact details he’d acquired and follow them up myself. He’d already gone to more trouble than I could reasonably have expected. On the other hand, he’d made more progress in a day than I had in years, and he was looking at me now with a mixture of wariness and hope that I was reluctant to rebuff. Perhaps, back when he’d known me, I would have baulked at accepting his help. Back then, of course, I’d had a degree of independence I was never going to regain.

Ray drummed on the table, breaking into my thoughts.

“Come on, Fraser!” he said. “Road trip! What’s not to love?”

* * *

We agreed at last that we’d set out to Sault Ste. Marie in the morning.

“I’d better call home and tell them I’ll be gone a little longer,” I said. “Is this a reasonable time to phone?”

“What, Inuvik?” Ray said. “It’s only an hour behind us, right?”

“Ah. So would that make it a reasonable time?”

“I dunno, Frase, you tell me!”

I sighed and picked up my cell phone. “Fine. I’ll just see if anyone’s awake.”

“Nah, save your cell. You can use the landline.”

“Thank you, but in that case you’ll need to input the number for me.”

“Why, you don’t have fingers?”

“Yes, I have fingers,” I said testily, opening my list of contacts. “Here, this is Stuart’s number, if you could kindly type it in.”

Ray scowled. “Fine, whatever. Give it here.” He tapped at the landline’s handset. “Okay, hit green and you’re good to go. I’ll go upstairs, give you some privacy.”

He retreated before I could point out it wasn’t necessary, and he didn’t reappear for some time after I’d hung up.

“Everything okay?” he asked, with unconvincing casualness.

“Yes, everything’s fine. Well, Ella broke another hockey stick and Brody tipped glue all over a classmate’s project, but that’s fairly standard.”

“Oh. They’re your kids?”

“Yes.” I passed him my cell phone again, pointing out its wallpaper. “That’s Ella, and that’s Brody.”

He took it, glancing at the picture. “I didn’t think you’d have kids,” he said flatly. “I dunno why.”

“They’re not actually mine, they’re my sister’s. Well, they’re her stepchildren, to be accurate, but they were very young when she and Stuart married, so they don’t remember any different.”

“Your sister’s?” he said, surprised. “Maggie?”

“Yes. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, we met.”

“Oh.” I waited a moment but he didn’t elaborate, so I went on. “Ella was only little and Brody just a baby when Stuart moved in with Maggie. Then, when I got out of the hospital and needed a place to stay, they took me in too.”

“Wow. That’s…wow. So Stuart’s your brother-in-law?”

“Yes. He and Maggie have been remarkably kind to me, especially given that I wasn’t even aware she and I were siblings; it had to be explained to me again. And Stuart’s family were already dubious enough about her, so bringing home another RCMP officer can’t have helped matters. Ex-RCMP,” I corrected myself hurriedly. “Her work takes her away from home a good deal, and Stuart is busy too, so looking after the children is the best way I have of repaying their kindness—although most of the time I suspect it’s more a case of the children looking after me.”

Ray tipped the phone, examining the picture more closely now. “Cute kids. How old are they?”

I hesitated. “Ella is about this high, and Brody about this high.”

“Okay, so how old’s that?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe you can come and meet them sometime, and they can tell you in person.”

“You’re not _sure?”_ he said, grinning. “How can you not be sure? That makes you, like, the worst uncle ever.”

“I can never be sure, because of the acalculia.”

“The a-what?”

“Acalculia. It’s one of the cognitive impairments caused by the lesion in my parietal cortex,” I explained, as patiently as I could. “I have particular issues when handling numbers.”

“You’re kidding!”

I suppressed a sigh. “I thought I’d told you this already, Ray. I had several intracranial haemorrhages, resulting in alexia, agraphia, and acalculia, amongst other issues. I’ve since learned to read and write again, although I’m still rather below Brody’s level and likely to remain there. Unfortunately my numerical comprehension has never really recovered.”

“Huh. What does that mean, you can’t do math?”

“I can’t count at all.” I scratched at the scar on my forehead. “Well, no, that’s not strictly true, but I’m told the results don’t bear any resemblance to actual mathematical sequences.”

“Seriously? You can’t even count?”

“No. Numbers are meaningless to me, since I’m unable to place them in rank.”

“Huh. That’s so weird. Wait, what about if I...”

Tossing the phone aside, he stepped towards me and took me by the hand and waist in a ballroom stance before I could pull back. He gave me a formal nod and waited expectantly until I nodded back, confused but obedient.

“Okay?” he said, and launched us into a slow waltz, chanting under his breath as he spun us about the room. He was, it seemed, rather a fine dancer, and not at all embarrassed to be dancing with me. “One, two, three,” he chanted. “One, two, three. See, it still works! You can count!”

I pulled away, a little breathless. “I didn’t say my pattern recognition skills were affected. It’s my computational capacity that’s dysfunctional, not my sense of rhythm.”

He laughed. “Yeah, jury’s still out on that one. Hey, don’t worry, I got your back. I can do the numbers thing for you. It’s weird, though, because reciting pi to a hundred digits was like your party trick at the Two-Seven. Won me twenty bucks off of Huey one time.”

I frowned, not sure whether to be offended. “I thought I was assigned to the Chicago PD as an international liaison, not a performing monkey.”

“There’s a difference?” He slapped me on the back. “Damn, I missed you, Fraser. You still can’t dance for shit, though.”

* * *

I stayed overnight on Ray’s couch again, and again I lay awake for some time. The room seemed too quiet, unnaturally empty without his soft breathing from the armchair opposite. No doubt he slept better upstairs than propped in a chair, but I was glad when Huskie wandered in and lay down near me on the rug. In the moonlight I might almost have mistaken her for my own long-lost canine companion; a ghostly version of him, anyway, with his delicate grey-gold patterning bleached to the purest white.

“Goodnight, Huskie,” I whispered. “Sleep well.”

She whined softly in reply. Then she laid her head on her paws and closed her eyes. I watched her for a little while, but before long I could feel my own eyelids drooping, and I sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

To my relief, Ray suggested taking his van up to Sault Ste. Marie instead of his bike. As he pointed out, it was handy for undercover work, being less conspicuous despite its size.

“No one notices parcel vans,” he said, as he unlocked the garage shutter and hauled it up. “You always got a reason to be there. Plus, this way we can take Huskie. Stay where you are, Frase, I’ll back it out.”

He wriggled down the side of the van and reversed onto the street to let me in. The side panel of the vehicle bore the legend “McLeod Deliveries” in small neat capitals, the same name I’d seen on the new mail on his doormat, its incongruity provoking the same fleeting jolt of vertigo the letters had. Ignoring the sensation, I placed my overnight bag in the back alongside his and opened the passenger door. Huskie darted in ahead of me, and I had to chivvy her along the seat to make space. Clearly she was accustomed to riding shotgun.

“I apologise for not being able to share the driving,” I told Ray as I pulled on my seatbelt.

He checked his wing mirror before pulling away from the curb. “Uh, okay. That’s fine. I mean, I always did the driving, so...”

“Ah. Well, the decision is out of my hands these days.”

“What, they take your license off you?”

“Not as such, no, but I’m unable to comprehend numerical speed limits, so I’m technically unfit to use public highways.”

“Huh.”

We were silent for a while after that, as Ray navigated his way through neighbourhoods still half-familiar to me and then onto the interstate. He drove more cautiously than before, keeping to moderate speeds and checking his mirrors frequently, perhaps from habit, perhaps aware of my scrutiny. I certainly felt safer in the van than on the bike, although a small inner voice reminded me I hadn’t entirely hated the howl of the wind, the rush of fear, the hot reek of leather as I held onto Ray’s jacket for dear life.

The van at least had more in the way of creature comforts, including a radio. Once we reached the highway, Ray tuned it to a local station and began to hum unselfconsciously along to it, changing the channel every few songs. Classic rock, punk rock, pure cheese and country: he sang along regardless, sometimes even getting the words right, tapping out the rhythms on the wheel with long-fingered hands. Pianist’s hands, I thought, and found myself wondering whether he could play at all.

Huskie, having attempted unsuccessfully to climb into my lap, curled up next to me with her chin resting on my arm. I bent to kiss her head and looked up in time to catch Ray’s amused expression.

“You never used to be that soft with Dief,” he said.

“You met Diefenbaker?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course I met him! He only conned like a million doughnuts outta me, with that sad-eyed routine of his.”

“Ah. Well, it’s not that I wasn’t fond of him, but he wasn’t really one for public displays of affection.”

“Oh, sure, blame the wolf!”

“I don’t mean it as an insult. He had too much dignity, that’s all.”

Ray watched me tickle Huskie until she whined and rolled over. “Nah, I think it’s you, Frase. You’ve _mellowed.”_

“Perhaps I have,” I said, ruffling her belly fur. “It could be the knock to the head. Or it could be the kids, I suppose. Preconceived notions of discipline do rather fly out the window, faced with the realities of childcare.”

“Yeah. I mean, I dunno about kids, but I guess I kinda spoil Huskie.”

“Not at all, she seems very well trained.” I paused in my stroking, letting my hand lie still until Huskie’s eyes slid shut and she started to snore. “That’s an interesting name she has, by the way.”

Ray grinned. “You noticed that, huh? Yeah, she’s a White Shepherd. Good watchdog. Not much like a husky at all, when you look close. But I was working in a lumber yard and hardware store back then, and we sold a lot of Husqvarna gear—you know, chainsaws and stuff, and sweatshirts and hats with the logo on them. She spent her first few nights cuddled up on a Husqvarna sweatshirt, and the name just kinda stuck. Stupid, huh?”

“Not at all, it suits her,” I said politely. “And she hardly has a monopoly on unusual names.”

“Yeah. Speaking of which, I’m guessing Dief isn’t... I mean, he’d be pretty old by now, I guess.”

“Yes, he, um...” I dug my nails into my thumb while I tried to find the right words.

Ray grimaced. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, it’s all right. He, um, he didn’t survive the accident.”

“Aw, shit. I’m sorry, Fraser.”

I nodded. “He wasn’t restrained at the time, of course. He was never restrained. Ray Vecchio thinks that’s where my obsessive tendencies originate, that they’re prompted by guilt at Diefenbaker’s death. Not that he’s ever said so in as many words, but he may be right all the same.”

Ray was quiet while he guided the van through a knot of heavy traffic. “It wasn’t your fault, though,” he said finally, as he slowed for a stop light. “You know that, right?”

“Hmm.” I tangled my fingers back into Huskie’s fur and cleared my throat. “I think you said you, uh, acquired Huskie in the divorce?”

Ray frowned at the abrupt change in topic. “Yeah. Not literally, though. I mean, it wasn’t like I could get married or anything.”

“You couldn’t?”

“Uh, I dunno what you’ve heard, Fraser, but Illinois didn’t suddenly turn pink while you were gone.” He took his phone off the dash and started flipping through his photo gallery, glancing between it and the stop light. “Here, scroll down from there.”

I took the phone and swiped through the pictures showing Huskie as a tiny white ball of fluff. “Oh, she was adorable! I’m not surprised it was love at first sight.”

“Yeah, she was the cutest thing ever. But see the guy holding her? That’s Chris. You know, the bonfire guy. I told you about him.”

“Oh. _Oh!”_ I went back through the pictures, examining the tall, square-jawed man in the background of a few of them as I floundered for what to say. “He’s, um, he’s very handsome too.”

“Yeah, and he knew it. He thought it gave him a license to be an asshole.” Ray shrugged. “I dunno, it was probably just as much my fault. He was a rebound from a rebound, so… You know how it is when you want something to work out, but every time you look at someone, all you see is who they’re not? So, yeah, that was a mess.”

The light flicked to green and Ray accelerated hard, swerving past a bus. I placed his phone carefully back on the dashboard tray and watched the road in silence for a while, bemused by my own reaction. I’d always prided myself on my tolerance and broadmindedness, but non-standard orientation simply wasn’t something I was accustomed to encountering at first hand. Among the communities in and around Inuvik, it would have been considered unmanly by many, if not actually shameful, and hardly something to be revealed to a stranger. Not that I agreed with that attitude, of course, and not that Ray and I were strangers in the strictest sense, but his openness surprised me all the same.

He didn’t seem to be expecting any particular disquiet on my part, however, so this was presumably something I’d already known about him, something he assumed went without question. And the more I observed him as he drummed on the wheel and sang along to the radio, the more familiar it seemed, as if I’d never thought of him any other way.

The real issue, as I had to force myself to acknowledge, was that I’d found him attractive from the start, despite his surly demeanour. At the time, I’d filed the fact away as irrelevant, immaterial, but the cheerful, affectionate nature that kept breaking through his gruffness was rather harder to ignore. To be trapped in a small space with him was unnerving, therefore, and I had to remind myself that his involvement with men in the past gave me no right to gawk at him now. I’d tamped down such feelings all my life; I could perfectly well continue to do so. I spent the rest of the morning looking resolutely out the passenger window, making sure not to catch his reflection in the glass.

“You doing okay over there?” he asked at last.

“Me? Yes, I’m good, thanks. I’m fine. I’m better than fine, thank you for asking.”

“Okay,” he said, apparently amused. “You hungry? I was gonna maybe stop for lunch in an hour, something like that?”

“Yes. Perfect. Absolutely,” I said, and shut my mouth before I could embarrass myself further.

We drove on for what I suppose was the hour Ray had mentioned, before finally pulling off the highway some distance beyond Grand Rapids. He indicated right at the next traffic lights but had to slam on the brakes as a gang of motorbikes came roaring across our path.

“Damn it!” he muttered, bending to retrieve his phone and road atlas from where they’d been flung into the footwell. “Fucking bikers think they own the road. You okay?”

I nodded, forbearing to mention that his own road courtesy hadn’t been much better when he was on his Harley. One of the bikes had halted in the middle of the junction, and its rider now held out a hand to stop the traffic while a long stream of his colleagues passed through the red light. Ray sighed and put the handbrake on.

“That’s a stop light, Ray,” I pointed out. “They’re legally required to give way to us.”

“Yeah? Who’s gonna make ’em?”

“I am, if necessary.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened my door, but he lunged across and grabbed me by my shirt.

“Like hell you are!” he hissed. “Stay there and keep still!”

“Let go of me, Ray. I’m simply going to explain to them that they can’t—”

“They _can. _They’re Hells Angels, they’re above the law.”

I almost laughed at the absurdity of this. “No one is above the law!”

“Look, are they actively hurting anyone right here, right now? Are they mowing down any pedestrians or, or, or squashing any baby ducklings?”

“Not as such, no, but—”

“No, they’re not, so chill the fuck out! There’s a hundred of them and two of us. My life may not amount to much, Fraser, but I’m not gonna trade it for a stop light.”

I didn’t really want to make the trade either, when it was put like that. My life, perhaps, but not his. I closed my door again and sat back, the shoulder of my shirt still clamped in his fist. He was somewhat slighter than I, and it would have been easy enough to break free, but instead I waited obediently until the last of the cavalcade had gone past. The original biker gave us a mocking salute and rode off after his friends, until the deafening howl of their engines subsided into a distant whine.

“See?” Ray said, releasing me and putting the van back into gear. “Discretion and whatnot. We all get to fight another day.”

* * *

Ray chose a fast food joint in the next town and announced he was taking Huskie for a walk before lunch.

“Gotta let her stretch her legs,” he said. “Gotta stretch mine, too.”

“Excellent plan,” I said, clambering out to follow him. “Let’s work up an appetite.”

Leaving the van in the diner’s parking lot, we wandered up the road, letting Huskie roam in the bushes and occasionally flinging sticks for her to fetch. It was flat country, open and featureless, the asphalt pavement an unwelcoming, washed-out grey under the noonday sun. For a moment the gathering homesickness was an almost physical pain in my chest, but I pushed it down again firmly, reminding myself that it was good to be out in the fresh air.

As we headed back toward the burger joint, I was surprised to see its parking lot filled with motorbikes, their leather-clad riders milling about. Ray paused a little distance away, his eyes narrowed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re probably not even the same bunch. We’ll grab the van and get outta there just in case, though. Plenty of other places to eat.”

He set off again with a wide-legged, confident stride, his keys jangling. A stranger would not have known he was nervous. I followed him into the lot and, before he could stop me, went right over to the central knot of bikers.

“Ah, gentlemen!” I said brightly. “Perhaps you can be of assistance. I’m not from around here, as you can possibly tell, and while we were driving along the main road not long ago I heard a particularly distinctive bird call I didn’t recognise. I believe it went something along the lines of _‘woo-eet woo-eet whit whit whit’. _Perhaps one of you could tell me what it was?”

They stared at me, and at Ray, who had hurried across and grabbed my elbow as if to tug me away. Then one of the men stepped forward, scratching his head. It was, I was almost sure, the same man who had saluted us at the crossroads earlier.

“You sure it wasn’t more like _‘tu-twee tu-woot’?”_ he asked. He looked round at the rest of the gang, who were now staring at him instead. “What? My kid likes feeding the birds.”

“Uh, you mean more like _‘chip chip chee-chee-chee’,”_ his friend said.

“Nah, man, it’s _‘kree chuk-chuk’,”_ a third biker said, and the others gathered round, arguing over hoots and tweets.

Beside me, I could sense Ray’s posture relaxing and his chest beginning to twitch in silent laughter. I made sure not to catch his eye; my poker face was good but not that good.

By the time the gang decided my mystery bird must have been a female Brewer’s blackbird, we were all friends for life, and they roared away from the diner’s parking lot at last after much back-slapping and recommendations to “order Dusty’s bacon double cheeseburger with dirty fries, a heart attack on a bun but worth it.”

Ray waited until they were a dust cloud in the distance before turning to me, grinning. “You’re such a freak. The racket that van makes, there’s no fuckin’ way you heard any bird.”

“I have excellent hearing, Ray.”

“Excellent bullshitting, more like.” He pointed to the picnic bench at the side of the parking lot. “Sit there, stay there, and try not to destroy the world while I go fetch us double bacon heart attacks. No, wait, gimme your phone first. Okay, I’ve put my number in here under ‘Ray Kowalski’. If you’re gonna destroy the world, call me first. Got it?”

“Got it.”

I sat down gratefully, more than a little dizzy from relief. Excellent bullshitting abilities I might have; it was only later that the shaking started, and I’d always tried to ensure no one witnessed that. I might be retired from my profession, but I still had my pride.

Ray was still smiling when he came back with sodas and burgers, which proved as delicious and unhealthy as the bikers had promised. As we headed back across to the van afterwards, I was swaying slightly on my feet, dizzy now from the buzz and the sugar rush alike. Ray grabbed my arm to steady me, and I stumbled against him, knocking him back against the van door and making him laugh open-mouthed.

“Hey, watch it!” he said, holding me upright with both hands. He glanced over my shoulder with habitual caution, but the parking lot was empty again now, and the van screened us from the road. He stood there another moment, flushed and breathless, with no sound but the soft creaking of his leather jacket as he shifted against the metal. He was unexpectedly beautiful when he laughed, so open and alive in the moment. I’d noticed it before, but now, with his hands warm on my biceps and his face half a breath from mine, I felt a sudden hot jolt of desire flood through me.

I saw him glance down at my lips and then lick his own. Without even thinking, I leaned forward and kissed him, and to my relief he responded instantly, his mouth opening under mine. He made a small, hungry noise and pulled me closer, yanking at my shirt, his tongue hot and quicksilver smooth against mine. I closed my eyes and gave in to the desire, cupping his jaw and deepening the kiss—until a sudden two-handed shove sent me staggering back across the asphalt.

“What?” I gasped, snapping open my eyes to see him poised like a boxer against the van door, his weight on the balls of his feet, both arms raised defensively.

“Don’t,” he warned me, backing a step away along the length of the van, his pupils wide and dark.

“Why...what...?”

He shook his head and slid another step away. “Just _don’t.”_

“I—I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t... That wasn’t... I mean, I—I—I apologise unreservedly.”

He sighed, lowering his arms. “Look, I said I’ll help you, and I will. But this—you don’t need to do this, okay? So _don’t.”_

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, hot with mortification. I’d thought it was what he wanted; every glance, every nuance of his body language had seemed to indicate as much. But that was what I’d thought before, of course, on the single previous occasion on which I’d allowed myself to give way to base desires. If I’d learned anything from that long-ago entanglement with the woman whose very name I would rather forget, it was how liable I was to misread such a situation, confusing my own needs with someone else’s. I of all people should have known better.

Ray had stalked away, but he swung round again at this, gesturing impatiently. “No, look, it’s not your fault. It’s just, I can’t do this, okay? I’ll help you, that’s fine, but you gotta leave it at that. Okay?”

I hung my head, studying the ground. “Of course. I’m very sorry, Ray. I assure you it won’t happen again.”

He hesitated but then came up and clapped me on the shoulder, rough but comforting. “Hey, it’s not your fault, okay? Forget it even happened.”

I nodded, not meeting his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, going round to open the driver’s door. “It’s all good. Come on, buddy, we gotta get moving if we’re gonna get to the Sault by nightfall.”

* * *

The journey was awkward for a long time after that, Ray tense and visibly unhappy despite his earlier words. Eventually, however, he began to loosen up again, humming and then even singing along to the radio, the corners of his lips twitching into a smile when at last I joined in. He had, it seemed, an impressive ability to put unfortunate incidents out of his mind. Either that, or he was as excellent an actor as he claimed to be.

“You’re into Beyoncé these days?” he asked suddenly, out of the blue.

“I’m what?” I said, confused, and he pointed to the radio. “Oh, the song. Well, Ella and Brody listen to a lot of popular music, so the words tend to sink in by osmosis. I don’t have a great deal of choice in the matter.”

He snickered. “Yeah, yeah. Blame the kids.”

“Well, it’s not exactly Beethoven, and I’m not convinced it will still be given airtime in centuries to come, but this particular tune is something of an earworm all the same.”

I glanced across at him and caught his grin.

“You know what, Frase, it’s way too late to worry what people think. You wanna listen to Beyoncé, listen to Beyoncé. You don’t gotta apologise.”

“Thank you, Ray.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Perhaps we could pick up a classical music station, though, or NPR.”

“Nuh-uh. You touch that dial, you die.”

“Ah,” I said. “Point taken.”

The radio stayed tuned to popular music, and Ray continued to hum contentedly along to pop and rock anthems alike. I let the sounds flow over me and tried not to watch him meanwhile, tried not to notice the way his hands caressed the wheel or remember how good they’d felt just a few hours earlier, gripping my jacket, sliding across my skin, setting my nerve endings on fire.

His words kept replaying themselves in my mind: “You don’t have to do this”, as if I hadn’t wanted it with every molecule of my being. “I’ll help you anyway,” he’d added. Had he thought I was trying to manipulate him, that it was some sort of bribe or down-payment for his cooperation with my investigations? He’d told me to forget it happened, but I couldn’t simply block things from my memory as he apparently could. I didn’t have amnesia on tap, convenient though that might have been.

Clenching my hands, I turned away to stare out at the endless wastes of Michigan instead, trying my best to ignore his reflection in the glass.

* * *

It was late by the time we reached Sault Ste. Marie—too late, Ray said, for any shipping company offices to be open. I’d assumed we’d head across the International Bridge, but Ray pulled into a motel on the Michigan side instead.

“We’re not crossing?” I asked.

“Nah, the people I need to track down will be on the Soo Locks side. I’m beat, Frase. I gotta hit the sack, pick this up again in the morning.”

“Fair enough,” I said, trying not to show my disappointment. He’d done a full day’s driving, after all. It was no wonder he was tired.

“I’ll go book us in,” he said. “Huskie, stay down. Good girl.”

He headed to the motel reception to collect the key, while I took the opportunity to tidy the cab, tossing into a spare plastic bag all the wrappings from our takeout supper, along with the various bits of detritus littering the dashboard. Ray, it seemed, shared the kids’ tolerance of mess as well as their dubious musical tastes. Huskie meanwhile lay flat on the seat, invisible to anyone who might be watching from reception.

When Ray came back, he shooed us quickly into the room, whose door was in any case hidden behind the van. Huskie, who had obviously done this before, darted inside and lay down panting happily under the window. I took stock of the surroundings. It was a typical cheap motel room, complete with polyester bedspreads, garish wall art, and a dark brown carpet that had seen better decades. Several better decades.

“I take it they don’t allow dogs,” I remarked, closing the door behind me.

Ray dropped the van keys on the nearest nightstand and switched the bedside lamp on. “No, and I’m guessing they’re not too keen on queers either.”

I stared at him and then at the other bed, startled.

“Look, we can just go to sleep, that’s fine,” he said quietly, setting his bag down on the closest bed. “I’m not gonna...I mean, it’s up to you, either way.”

“But you said—”

“Changed my mind.” He turned away, busying himself taking spare clothing out of his bag and folding down the bedcovers, while I stood hesitating by the door. At last he looked up. “What?” he said, his tone suddenly fierce. “Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I get what I want for a change? Give me one good reason, Fraser!”

I realised my mouth was open and shut it hurriedly. I wanted to say, _because I don’t know you. I don’t even know what I’m doing here._

He exhaled hard and took a step towards me, his hands held wide. “Shit, no, it’s okay. I didn’t mean to lose my temper. It’s fine, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want. I shouldn’t have—”

“I _do,”_ I interrupted, before I could stop myself. “I do want to. I’m just...I haven’t done this before, that’s all.”

“Oh.” He cocked his head, regarding me curiously. “Um, okay. I can show you, I guess. If you like.”

I reached for the door behind me to steady myself, my thoughts whirling like a flock of starlings. Too much adrenaline in one day, the analytical part of my mind noted: too much for my shaky metabolism to process. Too much oxygen in my blood, too many details swamping senses set permanently to hyperalert. The hideous brown carpet had begun to sway under my feet like the deck of a boat, and the walls were starting to warp inwards, closing around me like a snow-hole collapsing in on itself. And in the centre of it Ray stood waiting, his unnatural stillness the only sign that he was at all nervous.

I grasped the cold metal of the door handle and took a deep breath for what I hoped was the right answer.

“I would like that very much, yes.”

* * *

I woke up suddenly the next morning, sitting bolt upright in alarm before I remembered where I was. Ray was stretched out beside me on the narrow motel bed, fast asleep, with goose bumps rising on his sweat-sheened skin where he’d been pressed against me.

As I watched, his breathing gave a hitch and he rolled away onto his back, dragging a hand across his thighs in a motion so unconsciously erotic that it made my own breath catch. I wanted to reach for him, to trail kisses down his belly and lose myself again in simple lust, uncomplicated by old memories or new emotions. I would have given anything for things to have been that easy, for him to have been nothing to me, or everything. I wanted to flip him, pin him, take him—and I could; he’d let me, I knew he would. He’d _welcome_ it.

But that was exactly the problem. I had no memory of ever having been intimate with someone of my own sex before, yet last night I’d discovered I knew without hesitation how to take pleasure in a man’s body and give pleasure to him in return—and not just in the crude, unpracticed way that might have been gleaned from overheard half-truths and locker room talk. I knew it with subconscious precision, like a muscle memory formed by long repetition. More disconcertingly, I knew how to please this particular man, with all his individual quirks and unspoken desires.

He lay sleeping still, the duvet pushed down to his hips, his body almost luminous in the pale dawn light. I’d known before I’d even touched it how smooth it would feel against my lips, hairless but for the fine, blond down, and scattered here and there with freckles nearly as pale as the skin they marked. I’d known how he tapered at his loins, where the soft down gave way to a line of darker hair leading to the coppery curls at his groin, brighter and fierier than all the rest. None of this was familiar to me, and yet none of it had come as a surprise either, each new detail revealed like a simple inevitability, as if I’d always known it was so.

And as I contemplated him, sprawled across the sheets with the sky-blue duvet wrapped loosely about him, I was reminded again of the lost figure from my nightmares, the blue-clad stranger from the snowbound wilderness whose appearance had sparked such weird recognition in my dreaming brain. The nightmares had been pure fiction, or so Ray Vecchio and all the doctors had told me, mere noise flung together in my troubled mind, devoid of meaning. But I was certain now that that fragment was a genuine memory, a fleeting scrap of the reality I’d lost. The snowy landscape around him could have been anywhere, could even have been Chicago, but it wasn’t. It was Canada. It was home.

The thought should perhaps have comforted me. It did not. The ramifications of it, coming fast on its heels, struck me instead with dismay and with something close to anger.

I must have made some sort of sound, because Ray woke up suddenly, blinking. He started to smile at me, a lazy smile of open, uncomplicated happiness, but only for an instant. Then the shutters came down and he was back to his usual wariness, watching me closely, poised against the mattress as if he might have to scramble away at any second. It made me suddenly furious; it almost made me want to give him solid cause to fear me. I had the strangest sensation, not just that I might strike him but that I had already done so, a weird twisting in my gut of mingled fire and shame. The fact that I’d desired him, and still did, only gave fuel to my anger.

He was gripping the mattress hard, rucking up the sheet between his fingers.

“Spit it out, Fraser,” he demanded. “Whatever you’re gonna say, just say it.”

“You were in Canada before,” I said, more as statement than accusation. “You visited me there.”

He blinked again, apparently thrown. “Um...okay, yeah. I did.”

“Once, or a few times?”

“Just the once.”

“For a while?”

“Uh…” He hesitated, glancing sideways at me from under his lashes. “A few months.”

I watched him pick at the sheet. “You know, Ray, I think I’ve been quite patient with your need for concealment,” I said, not caring how snippy I sounded. “There are of course extenuating circumstances in this particular case, but I would appreciate it if you could for once in your life simply tell me the truth.”

“The _truth?”_ He laughed and sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so he was facing away. “Okay, fine. You really wanna know?” He paused as if I might actually change my mind. Then the fight seemed to go out of him, his shoulders hunching inwards. “The last six months in Chicago, you were at my place. I mean, officially you were still at the consulate, ’cause we had to keep it quiet, one-bed apartment and all that, but you hadn’t been there for months. You were with me. So when they transferred you back to Canada…” He fell silent, waiting for me to put the pieces together.

“You came with me,” I said, rubbing at my eyebrow. “You came to live with me.” My eyes were burning, and I felt suddenly close to tears.

“Yeah, like I said.”

“And we were…intimate. We _had_ been intimate, all that time.”

He laughed again, a horrible sound. “If that’s what you wanna call it, yeah.”

“And then?” I prompted, when the silence threatened to draw out again.

“And _then, _Vecchio came back from Vegas with the Mob on his tail.”

“So you left.”

“It’s not like I had a choice!” He shoved his hands through his hair, leaving it in disarray. “Look, the guy had risked his life a hundred times over. He deserved to get it back. If anyone from Vegas had found out who he really was…”

I thought about that, about the kind of people Ray Vecchio must have been involved with, and what they might have done to him if they’d tracked him down. What they might have done to his family, or perhaps even to me.

“So you had to make it look as if he’d never left Chicago,” I said. “Which meant…which meant you and I had never been partners at all.”

“Bingo. We knew it was coming, Fraser, we both knew it was coming. All the records they’d made for me at the Two-Seven, those got wiped clean. The guy they called Ray Kowalski had been at the One-Nine the whole time, and they had the documents to prove it. You and me, we never even met.”

“So you were forced to change identities again?”

“I had my orders, yeah. I coulda said no, but I was a Fed, it was my job. Just because I’d quit didn’t mean I could leave Vecchio swinging. Like I said, not really a choice.”

“And you couldn’t have found some way to stay? Pretended we’d met in some other manner?”

He shook his head. “Fraser, we already—”

“I _know _we’ve already had this discussion, Ray, but I don’t _remember _it, so just _answer the question!”_

He hunched down further. “I coulda done, yeah. Easier not to. Safer not to.”

“So—”

“So I _left_, okay?” He twisted to glare at me, his hands flung wide in sudden anger. “We yelled at each other for two weeks solid, and then I left. I never heard back from you, so I figured you didn’t wanna hear from me either. At least you were safe. I thought you were safe, anyway, ’cause no one ever told me otherwise. And that’s it, end of story. Happy now?”

I waited a moment until I was sure my voice would be level. “And you were going to tell me this…”

“Never, okay? ’Course I wasn’t. What’s the point?”

“The point is…” I hesitated, floundering, because what _was_ the point? He was always going to have memories where I had gaps. There was nothing either of us could do to change that.

“I kept quiet because I knew you’d freak out,” he said. “Which you _are _doing.”

“I’m not ‘freaking out’,” I snapped. “On the contrary, I think my reactions have been extremely restrained, given your failure to inform me of the most basic facts of our prior history.”

“Restrained, right. Your middle fucking name.” He reached for his jeans and pulled them on, yanking at the fastenings. “So you’re not who you thought you were. Sucks to be you. You ever stop and think maybe there’s stuff _I_ don’t wanna remember? Ever think of that, Fraser?”

I had no answer to that either, because I had no idea what I’d done to make him so wary of me. He’d said we’d yelled at each other for weeks on end. Maybe yelling had been _normal _for us. Maybe that was who I’d been back then. I couldn’t imagine it, but there was so much about those missing years that I couldn’t imagine. If he’d failed to be honest with me, perhaps he’d had good reason.

He caught up his car keys from the nightstand and pointed them at me. “Nothing to say, huh? No Inuit stories? No morality tale to prove how you’re right and I’m wrong?”

“I don’t—”

“You do, you always do! You think life’s this neat little story that you get to tell, so everything can happen just the way you want it and everyone lives happily ever after. But guess what, Fraser, everyone’s a fucking liar, and so are you.”

I stood up and took a step towards him. “Ray—”

“Just leave me alone!”

“But—”

“Leave me the fuck alone!” he yelled, hurling his keys so wildly that they struck the bedside lamp, smashing its porcelain base to pieces.

We both stood staring at the mess. He hadn’t been aiming them at me; that was something, I supposed, though I couldn’t help but wonder what else he’d broken in the past. Finally I made a move towards the scattered shards.

“Don’t,” he said. “Just leave it.”

“But it’s sharp, you’ll cut your—”

“Just _leave_ it!”

I stepped back, both hands raised in a show of submission.

He picked his keys out of the wreckage and stalked to the door, but then paused there, studying the carpet. “Look, Fraser, I’m a con job, that’s all. I told you that right at the start. Not my fault you weren’t listening.”

He went out, shooing Huskie with him, and the door slammed shut behind him. I was still trying to figure out how to respond when I heard his van engine rev and the tires screech away across the concrete.

* * *

The traffic beyond the motel window rose to a steady stream. Eventually a knock at the door heralded the arrival of the room service maid, who smiled apologetically and informed me that checking-out time had come and gone. Her smile wavered when she saw the wastepaper bin full of broken pieces of lamp, but a bill from the envelope Stuart had given me soon smoothed the matter over.

I went out and sat on the low wall of the parking lot, watching the cars go by and the sun climb higher. When it had risen above the motel’s neon sign, I tried calling Ray’s cell, but there was no answer. His overnight bag lay at my feet, along with my own. Either he’d forgotten it or simply thought it not worth coming back for.

I considered finding the maid again and asking her for directions to the nearest bus station. There were still several banknotes in Stuart’s envelope, perhaps enough for a Greyhound ticket back to Chicago. Finally, however, I dialled the number I’d always called when I was in a tight spot.

“Ray?” I said. “I need your help.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You okay there, hon?” the waitress asked me. “You need another top-up?”

I laid a protective hand over my glass of milk. “I’m fine, thank you, Charlie. I expect my friend will be arriving before much longer.”

“Now, don’t you worry about that,” she said. “We’re open right up to midnight. A green Buick, did you say he drove?”

“Yes, of the old-fashioned sort.”

“Look, a real old one just pulled in. Could that be him?”

I turned to see the low, sleek form of Ray Vecchio’s Riviera reversing into a parking bay. I was out the diner’s front door and halfway across its floodlit parking lot before Ray had even turned the engine off.

“Benny!” he said, climbing out the car and throwing his arms round me. “Thank God! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.”

He squeezed me hard and stepped back. “Seriously, ‘I’m fine’? That’s all you got?”

“Well, I _am_ fine, Ray.”

“Jesus Christ. I’m gonna strangle you one of these days, I swear I am.”

“Thank you, I appreciate the warning.”

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, leaning back to examine me through narrowed eyes.

“Quite sure.” I gestured towards the diner; Ray’s mood was always improved by food and coffee. “I’ve been having supper. Perhaps you’d care to join me?”

He frowned but then gave in, slinging an arm round my shoulders. “Sure, why not? Eight hours across Michigan just to have dinner with a madman. God, I love my life.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

He followed me into the diner and sat down at my table, patting Huskie absentmindedly and signalling to Charlie for coffee. She poured him a cup and went off to the counter with his food order.

“I’m assuming you ate already, Benny?” he said. “It’s, what, past ten already. Unless you don’t have any money? But I’m betting they fed you anyway, knowing you.”

“Yes, I’ve eaten, and paid for it.”

“Okay, good.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could pick out enough for a tip, though,” I said. “A generous one. The waitress is saving up for her daughter’s medical bills.”

“You made friends already, huh? Don’t worry, I got it covered.” He nodded at me. “Hey, nice shirt, by the way.”

I looked down at the faded black t-shirt Ray Kowalski had loaned me, emblazoned with the logo of some punk band I’d never heard of. “Ah. Yes, I ran out of clothes and had to borrow this.”

Ray Vecchio chuckled. “I’d say it suits you, but...”

“It’s not exactly my style?”

“Nah. Maybe it’ll grow on me.” Ray’s own clothing was crumpled from hours behind the wheel, and he looked exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed. He took a hefty gulp of his coffee. “Gimme half an hour, okay? We can head back as soon as I’m human again.”

I shook my head. “I wish we could, but we have to find Ray first. The other Ray, I mean. Ray Kowalski.”

“What, the guy that drove you up here and then ditched you? I’m not wasting time on that jerk. He can crash and burn for all I care. He can drive into the goddamn _lake.”_

“You don’t mean that, Ray.”

“I damn well do! Did I mention it took me eight hours to get here? Eight hours!”

“Well, I’m sorry about that, but he didn’t just ‘ditch’ me. He’s missing.”

Ray rolled his eyes. “Gimme a break. You can’t say someone’s missing just because they’ve done a runner.”

“That isn’t what happened. He went to pursue some investigations and never came back.”

“Uh, no offence, but had you been spouting conspiracy theories at him or something? Because he probably just took the chance to cut and run. I’m surprised you managed to drag him up here in the first place.”

“He was the one who suggested it, because he’d heard of Sidorczuk,” I explained. “He went down to the locks to find out more.”

“Sidorczuk? Christ almighty, there’s no way—”

“He was telling the truth!” I glanced round the diner and lowered my voice. “I’m aware of how unlikely it sounds, Ray, but listen to me. After I called you, I went looking for his van down by the locks and found it parked on a nearby street with the window cracked open a couple of centimeters and his dog still waiting for him in the cab.”

Huskie whined gently, laying her head on my thigh, and I scratched her ears.

“What, _this_ dog?” Ray asked. “This is his dog?”

“Yes. Her name is Huskie. It was fortunate I had my penknife and a length of wire to hand, so I was able to pick the door lock to get her out.”

“Huh.” Ray reached cautiously to pet her again. “How long ago was this?”

“I’m not sure, but he left early this morning, before I called you. Quite a while before.”

“And he was claiming to know someone called Sidorczuk?”

“Not personally, but he knew someone who did.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“He didn’t actually tell me that,” I admitted.

Ray squinted at me. “He didn’t _tell_ you?”

“Well, he was keen to deal with it himself, and I didn’t like to press too soon. He’s rather, um, independently minded.” I bit back the urge to justify myself further. Ray knew perfectly well how reliant on other people I was, and how much I resented it. “In retrospect he was probably just trying to keep me out of trouble.”

“Huh, yeah, nice try! So do you have any idea where he went?”

“Only that he had contacts in the haulage business and was hoping to speak to some of them on the Soo Locks side.”

“Great, so we’re shooting in the dark. The Soo Locks, I’m guessing there’s shipping company offices down there, loading docks, that kind of thing? You ask around at all?”

“Not yet. I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. I did try calling his cell, but he’s not answering.” As Ray reached for his coffee, I caught his wrist, gripping it hard. “Ray, please believe me, these are dangerous men he’s mixed up with. Yes, it’s possible he would have walked off and left me to my own devices. It’s even possible he would have left his van behind at the docks, meaning to come back for it later. But it’s simply not possible he would have left Huskie locked inside the vehicle for any length of time on a warm day. He’s a decent man, he loves his dog, and he would never have done that to her.”

“Damn it.” Ray heaved a long sigh. “Damn it, damn it, _damn _it.”

“Quite.” I released his wrist and watched him drain the rest of his coffee before setting the cup down.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “But if this turns out to be a wild goose chase, you’re one dead ex-Mountie.”

“Understood.”

Ray’s omelet arrived at last, and he set about demolishing it. Most of it was gone before he looked back up.

“So I guess we gotta do this, if I’m ever gonna get home again,” he said. “Where do we even start? You really don’t have a clue where Kowalski might have gone?”

I shook my head. “I was hoping Huskie might know, but when I asked her to track him, she simply ran to the locks and stood there barking at the gulls.”

Ray laughed. “She’s no Diefenbaker, huh?”

“Evidently not.”

“Right. Okay. Point one,” he said, stabbing a fingertip onto the Formica tabletop, “we got valid concerns for the guy’s safety, so we got some leverage there. Point two, he’s an ex-cop, right? So he’s one of us. More leverage. It’s too late for Frannie to be in the office, but I could call her team, see if one of the night shift can get a trace on Kowalski’s cell. You still got his number?”

I passed my phone over. “You’re planning to call our old precinct?”

“Yup.”

“If you speak to someone who knows me, tell them it’s Ray Kowalski’s number,” I said, getting to my feet. “And tell them it’s me asking.”

“But—”

“Just tell them, Ray. They’ll know why.”

* * *

I returned to our booth a few minutes later, holding a doggy bag with enough food to keep Huskie happy for a while. It hadn’t taken much persuasion; the kitchen staff were soft-hearted when it came to hungry pets.

Ray looked up as I approached. “Okay, so we got a fix on the cell phone. Totally not legal, and if anyone asks us then some guy called Dewey from Frannie’s team definitely didn’t help, but we got it. Kowalski’s nowhere near the docks, he’s halfway to Thunder Bay. And get this, he’s currently fifty miles offshore.”

“He’s on a boat?”

“Either that or he’s a damn good swimmer. Dewey checked with the Soo Lock engineers, and there’s only one freighter on that heading tonight, the _Garn Wright,_ so he has to be on that. I guess the next stop’s the Coast Guard.”

“No!” I said. “We can’t trust the Coast Guard. Ray was once involved in an undercover sting in which they were indirectly implicated, and although there was never enough evidence to bring charges, he was convinced some of them were dirty. If we alert them and the wrong people hear about it, there’s a good chance he’ll never make port.”

“Great.” Ray Vecchio rubbed at his neck. “Like one conspiracy theorist wasn’t enough, I gotta get mixed up with two.”

“It wasn’t a conspiracy, Ray, it was an FBI case, and he was in a position to know the facts.”

“Fine, then we need to call the port authorities. Or the police, the actual police, and get them to meet the ship when it reaches Thunder Bay.”

“And tell them what?”

Ray looked away. We both knew the Canadian authorities had regarded me as a troublemaker even before the accident report and my refusal to let it lie. They were hardly going to swoop on an innocent freighter on my say-so.

“I suppose I could wake Frannie and ask her to liaise with them on our behalf,” he said slowly. “She would only have our word to go on, though.”

I nodded, waiting for him to reach the inevitable conclusion.

“Okay, _fine,” _he said, scowling. “It’s, what, the same distance again to Thunder Bay, along the north shore? Another seven or eight hours? Dewey said the _Garn Wright’s_ due to dock at eight a.m., give or take. The Riv’s a hell of a lot faster than that. If we left now, floored it, we could get there first.”

I got to my feet, and Huskie jumped up too, wagging her tail.

“Thank you, Ray,” I said. “But I think, all things considered, you’d better let me drive.”

* * *

It took some argument, but when we set off in pursuit of the _Garn Wright,_ I was in the Riviera’s driver’s seat. Ray was by his own admission exhausted after his long trip from Chicago, and he conceded it would be marginally less dangerous to allow me behind the wheel than to carry on driving all night. I’d suggested taking Ray Kowalski’s van instead—I’d already picked its lock to get Huskie out and could probably have hotwired it easily enough—but this provoked even more horror.

“No way!” Ray said. “No way am I leaving my car here. Just...try not to set her on fire or anything, okay?”

“It’s very, very rare that—” I began.

“I mean it, Benny, _don’t._ There’s a finite number of these babies left in the world.”

I glanced across at him now as he sat blank-faced and blinking in the passenger seat. He hadn’t said a word since we’d cleared passport control at the border, and I was hoping the steady, monotonous droning of the wheels would lull him to sleep. I nudged the speed up a little. The highway was half empty this late at night, and it seemed safe enough. I couldn’t tell whether I was breaking the limit, but every time I thought of slowing, I got a flash of Ray Kowalski’s expression as he walked out of the motel room, and my foot pressed down automatically on the gas.

The car rattled loudly as we crossed the expansion joints of a bridge, and Ray Vecchio shook himself awake. He glanced out at the darkness and then down at the roadmap spread over his lap.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, wiping a hand across his mouth. “I was almost gone there. You doing okay?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Driving not freaking you out too much?”

“No. I do know how to, Ray.”

“Yeah, but you never actually do it these days, do you? Have you driven at all since—” He cut himself off hurriedly. “I guess it’s like riding a bike, though. Once you learn, you don’t forget.”

“I suppose not.”

He was quiet again for some time. Then he snapped the roadmap shut and tapped its cover. “So what’s going on with you and Kowalski?”

“Um, in what sense?” I asked cautiously.

“I mean, he’s the guy we went to see at Thanksgiving, right? He never said a word about knowing anyone at the Two-Seven. So how’d you manage to drag him into all this shit?”

“Oh.” I eased my grip on the wheel as I guided the Riviera around a long, slow bend. “Well, some of the evidence in my own case had led me to the lake freight business, and he happened to have some useful connections in the industry.”

“Okaaay. Which you knew because...?”

“Because he happened to mention it.”

“Right. When you happened to be visiting him down in Chicago, which you happened not to tell me or anyone else about. So you, what, spun him some kind of line, talked him into taking a road trip up to the Sault?”

I bit my lip, ignoring the bait.

“You could have asked _me _for help,” Ray said. “You do know that, right? You don’t have to go asking random strangers. And yeah, sometimes I say no, but only because I’m looking out for you.”

“So was he!” I blurted.

“Yeah, till he ran off and left you five hundred miles from home, with no clue and no ride back.”

“He didn’t run off, and he isn’t a stranger.” I traced the worn leather of the steering wheel, watching the road markings blur and flicker in the headlights. “Ray, the reason people remember him at our old precinct is that he used to work there. He was using the name Kowalski, but his real name is McLeod. He’s the one who covered for you while you were in Las Vegas.”

Ray stared at me. “Holy shit. You know about Vegas?”

“I do now.”

“Holy crap.” He sagged back against the headrest but then sat bolt upright again. “Wait, that was _him? _That guy, the guy you made me go see at Thanksgiving? I mean, they told me they got someone in, but they didn’t tell me it was _him.”_

“It was. I wasn’t aware of that at the time, either.”

“Then why the hell didn’t he just say so?”

“Because he was directed not to.”

“But Frannie gave me his address herself! She didn’t say a word!”

“Please don’t blame her. She must have had her orders likewise. And Ray was a federal agent; he took it for granted that he had to maintain his cover indefinitely if requested to do so.” I glanced across at Ray Vecchio. “So you understand now why it’s imperative that we find him. We’re deeply indebted to him and have been from the start.”

“I—yeah. Yeah.” Ray shook his head. “I mean, jeez, you coulda just told me!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to get him in any worse trouble than I already had.” I blinked hard, the road ahead blurring in my vision. “I’ve made such a mess of things, Ray. I thought perhaps it was you who’d been in danger, or me, but he was the one who’d spent time undercover in the freight industry, he was the one who’d had to change his name and move house repeatedly to stay safe, and I didn’t even _think._ He went wading back in because I sent him in, and I, I...”

Ray reached for my shoulder and shook it gently. “Hey, it’s okay, Benny, don’t panic. We’ll find him, I promise. He’s on a boat, after all. There’s only so far he can go.”

* * *

As we headed farther and farther north, Ray finally dropped off to sleep. I drove as smoothly as I could, trying not to wake him, but by the time we’d turned north-west and approached White River, the pressure in my bladder had become too much to bear. I pulled off the highway into a fast food outlet and stumbled out to use the restroom.

When I returned with the milkshake I’d bought to justify my visit, Ray was awake and talking on the phone. He hung up as I started the engine.

“I got hold of Dewey again,” he said. “They’re still tracking Kowalski’s cell, and we’re still on schedule to make Thunder Bay before him.”

“Good.” I passed him the milkshake and eased the Riviera back onto the highway. “I don’t want to lose any more time than we can help, though.”

Ray was silent for a while, watching the buildings and traffic thin out again as we ran through the outskirts of town.

“Dewey said you and Kowalski used to be close, back in the nineties,” he remarked at last. “Said he’d assumed Kowalski was still living in Canada, even. Said he followed you up there in ’99.”

“He did for a while, yes.”

“Hmm. I guess talking him into ferrying you up to the Sault wasn’t that big of a deal, then.” Ray snickered. “I swear you got him running after you worse than I ever did. You got some kind of hold over him or what?”

I could feel my face flushing. “No, and I hardly think mockery is appropriate, Ray. He gave up his job to accompany me to Canada, and then gave up what little he had left to keep us both safe. We should at the very least be grateful to him.”

“Fine, fine, he’s a hero! It’s just funny, that’s all.” Ray smirked at me. “Plus, if you keep running off to Canada with the same guy, people are gonna talk.”

I cleared my throat, hot with embarrassment. “Well, I don’t recall meeting this Dewey, so I can hardly be held responsible for what he says. But as it seemed intimacy between me and Ray Kowalski was the status quo, I thought it not unreasonable to continue in the same vein.”

The amusement fell from Ray’s face. _“What?”_

“I said—”

“Intimacy?” he interrupted. “What the hell does that mean?”

I clenched my teeth, staring at the road ahead.

“Benny?” he demanded. “What does that _mean?”_

“Nothing that requires further explanation,” I said stiffly. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m entitled to keep my private life private, as is he.”

“Private life? You didn’t—Jesus Christ, what did you do?” His voice rose a tone higher. “Tell me you didn’t actually sleep with him! Did you _sleep _with him? Hey, look at me! When the hell was this? Last night?”

I risked a glance at him; he seemed more upset than angry.

“Before that,” I admitted.

_“Before?_ How long before?”

“You know how unreliable my grasp of time is, Ray.”

“How long before?” he insisted.

I looked away again. “I suppose since some point not too long after you left for Las Vegas.”

“No way!”

“It was unprofessional of us, I admit, given our respective roles at the time.”

“Since Vegas? Is that what he told you? For chrissakes, that’s bang in the middle of your blind spot! Do you actually remember any of this? You don’t, do you? God, this is such bullshit!” Ray passed a hand over the sparse stubble on his scalp. “Look, I know it’s your life and you’re an adult and all that, and I respect that, I do. And you’re grateful to the guy, I get that too, but you don’t owe him _that._ You don’t owe _anyone_ that.” I shook my head, trying to protest. “No, listen to me, Benny! There are always gonna be people who try and take advantage of you, you have to understand that. You can’t just believe everything you’re told. For God’s sake, I can’t _let_ you believe it!”

I held up a hand to silence him. “I appreciate your concern, Ray, as always. But in answer to your original question, I do remember my partnership with Ray Kowalski, at least in a sense. I know how close we were—‘were’ being the operative word, as we seem to have fallen out again. I suppose there are only so many falsehoods a relationship can take before it becomes easier to pretend it never existed.”

Ray broke in as if he hadn’t heard a word. “Yeah, but we’ve been here before, you know we have! You_ trust_ people. You always trusted people, even before the accident. Now you’re this weird combination of paranoid and trusting at the same time, and you don’t realise how crazy you can get!”

“I’m not—”

He shook his head hard, as if to dislodge his last words. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I know you’re not crazy, and you’re not...un-normal. But there’s a pattern here, Benny. This is what you _do._ You meet someone you like, and three seconds later you have them marked down as a hundred percent reliable till the end of the world. Then the next thing you know...”

He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to. The last time I’d trusted someone enough to sign over my heart to them, he’d had to remortgage his family home to pay my bail.

“This isn’t like that,” I said quietly. “It’s nothing like that at all. I do know Ray. I’ve known him for years. I know we lived together, both in Chicago and north of the border, at considerable risk to our careers and reputations. He didn’t coerce me into this, I chose it. And as to what our relationship was originally founded on, I can’t honestly tell you, Ray, as I don’t remember. Perhaps it _was_ gratitude. I must have been lonely after you left, and grateful for his company. But there’s little point attempting to explain something that’s inherently inexplicable to outsiders, and the effects of love and amnesia would both fall into that category.”

Ray shot me a sharp look. “Love? Seriously?”

“Unless you have a better word for it.”

“Don’t tempt me! I got a whole lot of words for you, Benny!”

“Perhaps so,” I said. “Nevertheless, the one thing I would maintain is that, regardless of the current state of relations between me and Ray, he is a good man and deserving of our respect.”

Ray Vecchio was silent for a long time after that, staring out at the dark, endless highway. When he turned back at last, his expression was rueful.

“What?” I asked.

“They _called _me,” he said. “Back when you had the accident, they called me, the hospital staff in Thunder Bay, and asked me to go up there. I hadn’t seen you since I got back from Las Vegas, I hadn’t visited. I was a mess, so I just thought, better leave it for a while. But they told me you’d been asking for me and wouldn’t stop, so I drove up to the hospital—drove overnight like now—and when I got there you were all messed up, with these tubes and bandages and stuff everywhere, and you’d lost consciousness again. They said you’d had another bleed and it was pressing on your brain—”

“A subdural haematoma.”

“Right, and then a few days later you woke up again, and I don’t know what I was expecting—that you’d be blind again, maybe, or not even know who you were, like the last time—but you were fine. I mean, not a hundred percent fine, you were still kind of confused for a while, and it took even longer before you could say whole sentences, but you were _you._ We thought you’d get better, and even when you didn’t, you were still okay.”

I nodded. “Yes, I was extremely fortunate, in the circumstances. And it was kind of you to come visit me in the hospital, Ray. I was glad to see a familiar face.”

His expression twitched with some emotion I couldn’t quite read. “Yeah, I know you were. But it wasn’t me you’d been calling for, was it? It was him. It was the other Ray.”

I stared at him, my mouth open and no sound coming out. I didn’t remember. I couldn’t remember. Those early days in the hospital had been a patchwork of pain and missing time, held together by shadows and sensations: the slow, monotonous beeping of the monitors, wired to my unresponsive limbs; the cobwebby feel of the crepe bandages swaddling my chest and skull; the gentle tug of the intravenous line at my wrist, and the sharp pain across my ribcage with every indrawn breath. Unfamiliar voices that came and went in the darkness, as unknown hands shook me out of the drugged slumber to which I inevitably returned. I’d wept and cried out, yes, I remembered that much. Sleeping and waking had merged into one, and the nightmares had had hold of me even then. But for whom I’d called out, I couldn’t tell.

“No,” I said at last. “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

“I didn’t know about him, I swear I didn’t,” Ray said urgently. “I lied to you about some things, but nothing like that. I wouldn’t have kept that from you.”

“You couldn’t have done.” I shook my head at the stupidity of it all. “We hadn’t told anyone—not my colleagues in Yellowknife, not even Maggie. There was no one left who could either hide it from me or remind me.”

“I’m sorry, Benny. I wish...I don’t even know what I wish. I wish I’d asked you about it, at least, or been someone you felt okay to tell. I keep thinking about what Dewey said. He knew, he must have known, and I didn’t even think.”

“It’s not your fault, Ray. None of it is your fault.”

He shook his head, looking away, and was silent again for a very long time. When at last a soft sound made me glance across at him, his head was lolling and he was slumped against the door, fast asleep.

* * *

The world was brightening into dawn by the time Ray woke up, the sky in the rear-view mirror streaked with pink and violet. From the spring-flushed woodlands either side of the highway, birdsong was audible even over the roar of traffic.

Ray straightened in his seat, rubbing a hand across his chin. “What time is it?” he said, and glanced at his watch to answer his own question. “Pull in at Nipigon and I’ll take the wheel.”

“I’m fine to continue,” I said. “I doubt you’ve had enough sleep.”

“You kidding? I told you the youngest twins were teething, right? Any time Mattie shuts up, Julio starts howling. This is the best sleep I’ve had all month. Get me a coffee and I’ll be fine.”

I didn’t argue further. I’d never admitted to him or any of my family the extent of the nerve damage to my upper limbs—I was lucky not to have more severe physical injuries from the accident, after all, and to have complained about a little muscle weakness would have been petty—but handling an old car without power steering had quickly become painful, and I wasn’t sorry to hand over my duties. In any case, Huskie was in need of a rest break. Given the Great Lake-sized puddle she made in the parking lot when we stopped at the Nipigon Starbucks, Ray’s back seat must have been in danger for some time.

When I came back out carrying coffee and batting mosquitoes away with my free hand, Ray was already in the driver’s seat. He took the takeout cup from me and drank hurriedly.

“I called Dewey again,” he said, between gulps. “It’s not great news. The signal’s gone, although that probably just means Kowalski’s phone has run out of charge. Either that or he’s turned it off to save the battery.”

“Hm,” I said, buckling myself into the passenger seat. “Probably.”

There were other things it could mean, of course, but neither of us mentioned those. Ray drained the last of his coffee, passed me the cup, and pulled back onto the highway.

“Ray?” I asked, once he’d settled into his favoured cruising speed, hurtling us westwards faster than I’d dared to drive.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever feel like you keep making the same mistakes?”

“Nah. Maybe. I know not to ever have twins, at least. Why?”

“I think I have. Made the same mistakes, that is. With Ray.”

Ray Vecchio grimaced. “Hmm. You know what’s funny? I always kind of wondered if you liked guys. You never said anything, but I wondered all the same. Kind of hoped you didn’t, ’cause your life’s tough enough as it is. But I wasn’t around back when you met him, so I guess I don’t get to call you on it now, even if I was gonna, which I’m not.” He started counting on his fingers. “Vegas, that’s gotta be, what, eight or ten years ago now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Right, sorry. It is, though, it’s eight or ten years. And you really liked him? I mean,_ really_ liked him?”

“Yes,” I said, the knot of misery tightening in my chest. “I kept telling you I thought I was missing something. I just didn’t realise it was some_one.”_

“Ah, jeez, Benny, you’re breaking my heart here.”

“I’m sorry. And I can’t begin to explain how it was possible to miss someone I didn’t even recall. All I know is that it _was_ possible, and intensely so.”

“Maybe it’s like, what’s that thing called, a phantom limb,” Ray suggested. “Like, it’s not there anymore, but it still hurts.”

“Something like that, perhaps. A pain from a limb I wasn’t aware I’d ever possessed. And now that I’ve reencountered him, the pain is all the more intense.”

Ray winced. “You’ve really fallen out with him?”

“Rather badly, I’m afraid. He accused me of, in his own words, ‘freaking out’ when I found out about our previous relationship, and I suppose I did. It was a lot to take in, although that’s no excuse.”

“Nah, you’re bound to freak out about something like that. I mean, with a guy, come on! That’s—” Ray stumbled to a halt. “Sorry, that’s not... I mean, that’s probably not an issue.”

I gave him the most reassuring smile I could manage. “I’m not sure, to be honest. Perhaps to some extent it was. But to have anyone know me so intimately and not know them at all in return was difficult to handle, and I reacted by lashing out. Or rather, by provoking _him_ into lashing out, which comes to much the same thing. I told you he left, but the truth is we quarrelled badly first.”

“Ah, shit. What did he do?”

“Nothing, it was my fault. He had a great deal to be angry about, and it was unfair of me to expect him simply to pick up where we left off, as if nothing had happened.”

“Nah, that’s not your fault, ’cause you got, y’know, the thing you got.” Ray gestured at my scar. “Can’t you just explain that to him and patch things up, once we get him back? Just tell him you’re sorry. That’s usually the best tactic, whoever started it.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple, unfortunately.”

“But if you like him, and he likes you…”

“He—” I hesitated. “I’m not actually sure he does like me.”

Ray heaved a long sigh. “Look, Benny, I’m not a human dating app, okay? I did not sign up to be a matchmaker for middle-aged ex-cops. That was not my plan in life. But Dewey told me Kowalski did like you. Liked you a lot, in fact.”

“He said that?”

“More or less. And yeah, if I’m a hundred percent honest, it’s not what I would have picked for you, but then I would have picked wrong, because that’s how it works. Kowalski’ll look out for you, have your back?”

“I would assume so, given that he always has.”

“Well, okay then.” Ray accelerated hard, overtaking a truck and then swerving smoothly back into lane. “Let’s go get your man.”


	6. Chapter 6

I blinked awake and sat up, glancing around. I wasn’t sure how much sleep I’d had, but my head felt a good deal clearer, the world around me sharply focussed in a way it hadn’t been for some time. We were parked on what looked like wasteland, a post-apocalyptic landscape of cinder tracks and ore heaps, littered with rusting shipping containers. Ahead of us stretched Thunder Bay’s loading docks, with several lakers already moored one behind the other, fuelling or reloading. I craned my neck, but the only one whose name was visible was a vast grey hulk with the incongruously pretty moniker _Julie Lacey._

Ray wound his window down, wrinkling his nose at the stink of heavy oil. “The _Garn Wright_ hasn’t come in yet,” he said. “I’m guessing that’s her, out in the bay.”

I followed his pointing finger and saw a distant freighter being guided in by tug boats.

“We got a good view from here,” he said. “I say we sit tight, let her get close. If she docks in the empty berth right over there, we can watch whoever disembarks.”

The _Garn Wright_ wasn’t built for speed. She lumbered into the bay like a browsing muskox, a vast weight conserving its fuel. An age seemed to pass in slow motion before she moored at the ore docks and a gangway was swung across to her aft superstructure. Ray studied her through the binoculars he’d pulled from the glove box.

“Can’t see Kowalski,” he said, passing the binocs to me. “Half a dozen guys, but not him.”

“Are you sure? You’ve only met him once.”

“Hey, I’m not the one with amnesia here.”

I examined the gangway, the port buildings, and the ship herself. Ray was right. Several crewmembers were busy on deck and on the quayside, but there was no sign of Ray Kowalski.

“I’ll have to get aboard somehow,” I said. “If he’s still there, I need to find him while the crew are distracted.”

“How? They’ll see you!”

I raised the binoculars again. Like all lake freighters, the _Garn Wright_ resembled a floating loaf pan more than she did a traditional sailboat: bluff fore and aft, with red-painted sides several storeys high and completely sheer, impossible to climb. The aft gangway was the only way to board, and there was no chance of crossing it without being noticed.

“I could shinny up one of the mooring cables,” I said.

“Like hell you could! You’d stand out against all that red like a fly on a wedding cake.”

“Not if I’m quick.”

“Quicker than Spider-Man? Maybe in the old days, yeah, but not now.”

“Then how do I get aboard? Help me out here, Ray. You know more than I do about boats.”

“Little ones, yeah! The one I go fishing in is thirty feet long. This one’s, what, a thousand?”

I studied the ship again. Her crew had finished manoeuvring the loading gear into place, and even from this distance I could hear the distant rumble and crash of metal ore pouring into her holds.

“The loading gear!” I said. “I can cross that!”

“What, that giant boom-like thing?”

“Yes. If I’m interpreting the mechanism correctly, it’s just a conveyor belt, like in a supermarket.”

“Uh, yeah, if your groceries happened to be rocks and the belt was so heavy it needed scaffolding.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The scaffolding provides cover. If I climb onto it on the far side, no one will see me from the ship’s stern, and the belt will carry me across in seconds.”

“Then what? All that rock topples down into the hold?”

“Yes, through the cargo hatches, but I’ll try to climb off before that.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then I suppose I just tuck and roll.”

“You’re insane, you know that?” Ray said. “You’re actually insane.”

I tapped the scar on my forehead. “Well, at least now I have an excuse.”

He sighed. “I’m not gonna win this one, am I? Fine, go get yourself killed, see if I care. You got your phone? You got a coat? Wind’s rising, Benny, you’ll need a coat.”

I pulled Ray Kowalski’s jacket from his bag and put it on over my borrowed t-shirt. In dark jeans and black leather, I’d be as camouflaged as possible against the ore rattling across the loading boom. Ray Vecchio took a beanie from the glove box and tossed it to me.

“Don’t forget your hair,” he said. “Most visible part of you, these days.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“Please be careful, okay? _Please. _I gotta send you back to Maggie in one piece.”

I nodded and stooped down to take Huskie’s muzzle in my hands. “Stay here, okay?” I enunciated, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t deaf. “Look after Ray. I’m going to go find your master.”

* * *

Getting onto the loading boom wasn’t as difficult as I’d feared. I sneaked round the back of the dock buildings and approached on the far side, where the boom hid me from the freighter’s superstructure. I waited until the crew had filled one hold, shifted the boom across, and left it filling the next, which gave me a good stretch of time with no one paying attention.

The steel struts around the boom were sturdy and easy to climb, and I was through them and onto the belt in seconds. I pressed myself flat to its surface, face-down in the stream of taconite pellets as they rumbled their way up towards the ship. It was not unlike being on one of the moving walkways of an airport, except far, far louder. Dustier too, I realised, as I inhaled a lungful of taconite powder and sneezed hard, the sound fortunately drowned out by the machinery’s din.

As the end of the belt approached, I stuck a careful arm out and grabbed at the strut-work, swinging myself clear just as the cargo reached empty air and thundered Niagara-like through the cargo hatch and into the hold far below. I scrambled out via the scaffold instead and dropped the short distance to the upper deck, where I crouched down behind the hatch cover. No one was around, no one watching from shore. The wind was rising, a scatter of rain beginning to fall from a threatening sky, and the crew had all taken shelter in the port offices.

Keeping low, I scuttled aft to the nearest hatchway and ducked inside, finding the passageway empty. I stole along it, glancing into each cabin as I passed. All were empty. A metal companionway led up to the next level, where the cabins proved equally unfruitful. I continued up the final companionway, step by careful step, wincing at the clang of my boots on the grilles. I was almost at the top when another sound reached me: footsteps echoing across the gangway from shore.

Holding my breath, I sprinted back down to the first deck and skidded along the passageway. The only exit was the hatchway to the maindeck, where anyone on the quay would be able to spot me. The cabins were the only other option, though I’d be trapped. I darted into the last one and wedged its hatch shut behind me, panting hard.

Minutes passed, I couldn’t tell how many. Whoever it was came no closer. I pressed my ear to the bulkhead to listen, but I could hear nothing except my own heartbeat and the rumble of falling ore.

When the footsteps had faded and then ceased entirely, I straightened up and took stock of my surroundings. What had struck me as a poky little cabin was in reality quite generous by shipboard standards, but almost all the space was taken up with heavy-duty plastic crates, stacked from the deck to the overhead. I turned away but then turned back, puzzled. An unmade berth to starboard suggested this was a crewmember’s private cabin, so why was so much equipment stored here?

None of the crates had labels. I lifted the top one down, flipped back its lid, and stared at the contents. Package after package of a pale brown substance, tightly bundled in Saran wrap and sealed with duct tape. It looked like unrefined sugar, but I doubted it was anything culinary. The next crate held the same. Frowning, I opened a few more. All proved identical, until I came to the lowest boxes in the stack, which were full of matte black gun cases, carefully packed.

I put my ear to the hatch: still no sound above the distant din of the cargo thundering into the hold. There was a mass of paperwork in one of the boxes, some of which looked like shipping invoices or manifests. I tried to skim-read a few of them, but the words danced before my eyes and there wasn’t time to spell them out. Taking out my cell phone instead, I snapped a few pictures. The most promising pages went into my jacket pocket to take with me. The final sheet of paper I folded into a tiny envelope. Using my penknife, I slit open one of the pale brown packages and transferred a bladeful of the contents into the envelope. It had a distinct chemical scent, unfamiliar but strong enough to dissuade me from tasting it. I folded the envelope up and tucked it into my pocket with the paperwork.

I raised my head to listen. While I’d been distracted, the rumbling noise seemed to have stopped. There was a sudden clanking outside on the maindeck, with a metallic clang like that of a cargo hatch being clamped shut. Then a different rumble started up, one that made the whole ship tremble under my feet, and I realised with a shock that it was the engine revving up.

A door slammed somewhere, and I heard raised voices in the passageway. I lifted the last crate hurriedly back into place and slid behind the stack. More footsteps in the passage, and the slam of boots on the companionway. I hunkered down and waited; there was no way to leave the ship now.

Time passed, impossible to say how much. I heard distant shouting from the quay, answered by calls from the maindeck. At one point the ship’s foghorn blared a sudden warning, making me flinch. The roar of the engine kicked up a notch, and I felt a slight lurch as the ship gained way, then a steady shuddering as she headed out across the bay. There was no porthole, nothing to tell me where we were. I could only hope that whichever crewman owned this cabin would stay on deck until I’d managed to slip out.

It must have been late morning by the time I decided to take my chances. I opened the cabin’s hatch very slowly and peered out. No sign of anyone around. I crept out and was halfway down the passageway when the hatch to the maindeck clanged open. Looking around wildly, I spotted an open cabin door to my left. I threw myself headlong through it and pressed my back to the bulkhead, panting.

Men’s voices came closer, low and gruff.

“You off shift at noon?” one said.

“Yup,” the other replied, and I heard him jangle what sounded like a bunch of keys. “When’s the storm due to hit?”

“In an hour or so. Skipper says he’s gonna get past Pie Island, then hug the north shore, stay close enough to drop anchor and ride it out if we have to.”

“Huh. We gotta wait till he’s out the way, I guess.”

“Yeah. Don’t need witnesses.”

Their voices retreated up the companionway to the next deck. I ducked my head out and then crept after them. They climbed to the top, the level I hadn’t yet been able to search, and disappeared into the last cabin on the right. I edged down the passageway and slid into the cabin opposite.

Peeping through the crack in the hatchway, I caught a glimpse of a bound figure lying on the deck of the other cabin, before the crewmen came back out and I had to push the hatch closed again. My heart was hammering against my ribs. That brief glance had been enough to show it was him—Ray Kowalski, Stanley McLeod, or whoever he was. It no longer mattered what name he went by; it no longer mattered whether the painful leap in my chest sprang from broken memories or newfound hope. All that mattered now was getting him out alive.

The crewmen were talking in low voices as they passed my hiding place.

“Could do without the storm,” the first one said. “Had enough delay on this already.”

“Chill the fuck out, man! All we gotta do is sit tight, wait till the skipper’s below. Then we take the cop on deck and drop him over the side. Problem solved.”

“I guess.”

“You guess? Grow a fucking pair! You giving me a hand with these crates or what?”

The door to another cabin crashed open, and heavy plastic scraped across the deck. I forced myself to sit tight and wait. A cascade of fight-or-flight hormones was swirling through my blood, urging me to break out, grab Ray, run, but I knew it would only get him killed—assuming they hadn’t killed him already. Voices continued to ring from the cabins either side, and I could hear the thump of boxes being shifted. The wind round the ship’s superstructure rose gradually from a low whistle to a shriek as the storm approached, and the sway of the deck underfoot intensified until it began to make me queasy. At one point a sudden loud volley of footsteps echoed along the passageway, and shortly afterwards the ship’s engine cut out completely. There was a distant rattle, followed by splashes: anchors being run out fore and aft, I realised. The captain must have done as he’d planned, anchoring to wait out the storm.

Finally the last of the footsteps retreated down the companionway, leaving silence in the cabins. I waited a few more seconds and then stuck my head round the hatchway. All clear. Just one man was left: Ray Kowalski, still tied up on the deck of the cabin opposite. He kicked wildly when he saw me. He was still clad in the clothes he’d worn at the motel, but his face was swollen with bruises. He was alive, though, and conscious. The relief of it made me so giddy I almost stumbled. I ran across to him and pulled his bloodied gag loose with shaking fingers.

“Wha—” he began.

“Shh!” I whispered, covering his mouth with one hand while I fished for my penknife with the other. His wrists and ankles were secured with thick cable ties that took me several seconds to saw through. “Can you stand?”

He nodded once, his eyes wide. He stumbled a little as he got up, the circulation returning slowly to his limbs, but as I crept back down the passage he was right behind me. We made it to the companionway and down to the level of the maindeck without being caught. I paused at the hatchway to the open deck, checking for anyone around, but Ray pushed past me without hesitation.

“Run!” he hissed, taking off towards the distant bows. I sprinted after him, dodging round the hatch covers and along the starboard rail. The rain was lashing down diagonally now, mixed with spray whipped up from the roiling lake. The ship was too vast for inland waves to make her heave or pitch as she might have done at sea, but she was heeling far to starboard nonetheless, her sloping deck slick with water. Ahead of me I saw Ray slip, catch himself on the railing, and run on with scarcely a pause.

At the foredeck, I headed for the only cover I could find, a stubby little mast bristling with radio equipment. I flung myself into its lee and stopped to catch my breath, my back pressed to the cold metal. Ray was already crouched there, looking round the other edge of the mast.

“Ray, are you—” I began.

He whipped round, his expression furious. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

I hesitated, taken aback. I hadn’t particularly expected thanks, but I hadn’t expected anger either. “I got aboard at Thunder Bay,” I said defensively. “Ray Vecchio drove me there. I was hoping to find you before the ship left port, but...”

Ray’s scowl deepened, and I bit my tongue. I’d seen him lose his temper often enough by now; I should have known better than to take it at face value. He was angriest when he was most scared, I _knew _that. I held my hand out between us, palm-up, and after a long moment he took it, his grip warm and steady in spite of his grazed knuckles.

“You’re my partner,” I told him. “You’re my friend.”

He exhaled hard, touching the tip of his tongue to his split lip. “Yeah, well, now we’re both screwed, ’cause there’s nowhere to hide and nowhere to go. Sooner or later they’ll find us.”

I craned my head round the edge of the mast. A few crewmen were already visible through the pouring rain, bent over a distant cargo hatch, their backs to us. If they’d discovered Ray was gone, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out he hadn’t broken through into the hold.

“There’s one way,” I said. Releasing Ray’s hand, I crept forward to the bow railing. The metal gunwales stretched higher than my head, but at around knee height there was a single hole where the immense chain that held the bow anchor passed through the hull before angling down towards the distant waves. Ray followed me and crouched by my side.

“You’re kidding!” he whispered, tugging at the gap between plating and chain as if he could somehow pull it wider. “We can’t fit through there!”

“I’m afraid there’s no choice. As you pointed out, if we stay here, they’ll find us.”

He stared at the hawsehole and then back at me. “Okay, say we did it. Say we somehow breathed in, squeezed through. What the hell would we do then?”

I grasped the great iron links of the anchor chain, letting their chill and solidity steady me. They were easily wide enough for a man to rest on—for both of us to rest on.

“Ray, I’ve trusted you this far,” I said. “Every single time, I’ve trusted you. For once, would you please trust _me?”_

He gave a disbelieving laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Entirely so.”

He ducked down to peer into the hawsehole. “Through there?”

“Yes. Through there.”

He withdrew his head and shot me a swift, piercing look. “All right.”

“All right?”

“All right, I trust you. You’re gonna get us both killed, but I trust you.”

I nodded, zipping up my jacket. “Fine. I’ll go first.”

It turned out to be a tighter fit than I’d bargained for. I managed to wriggle my legs and hips through the gap, but my shoulders got firmly wedged between the chain and plating.

“Hey,” Ray hissed, and I felt him seize my wrist and set a boot against my shoulder. “Lift your arm, okay? Breathe in.”

“Wha—?” I began, and then yelped as my arm was wrenched upwards and I slid through the hawsehole so quickly I almost fell. I grabbed at the chain, shoving my boots into one of its links.

“Fire in the hole,” Ray whispered, and scrambled after me much more gracefully, his slight disparity in bulk making all the difference.

I climbed a little farther down before wedging myself in place where the outward slope of the hull hid me from deck. The wind was howling loudly enough to drown out our voices, even if we shouted. Provided none of the crew thought to climb the bow rail and look directly over the side, we’d be safe here for a while.

Ray halted just above me, leaning into the angle of the chain.

“What now?” he called down. “It’s miles to shore, you’d never make it.”

“Would you?” I asked doubtfully.

“Nah. Can’t swim at all.”

I frowned. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. It must have been terrifying for him, hanging there above the open water—although of course from that height the fall alone would probably have proved lethal. But in any case he was right, we’d never make landfall, even without the storm raging. The captain would have chosen a spot shallow enough for the anchors to find purchase but not so close to shore as to risk running aground. I glanced up, blinking against the stinging rain bouncing off the hull.

“Climb down here,” I told Ray. “I’ll hook us on.”

Holding myself in place with my knees, I removed my belt and threaded it through one of the iron links. Ray clambered down to my level, and I passed it through his belt loops, buckling him firmly to the chain. He clung there, shivering. If he’d noticed I wasn’t similarly tied on, he didn’t say anything. I debated offering him my jacket—which was really his, of course—but settled instead for wrapping my arms round him, holding him firmly onto the chain and sheltering him as best I could from the deluge.

Shifting my weight carefully, I reached for the pocket where I’d tucked my phone in the hope of keeping it dry—a slender hope, as the rain was now lashing down in thick sheets and running down the inside of my collar. To my relief, the phone flickered to life in spite of the droplets speckling its screen. I struggled briefly with its menu, until Ray saw what I was doing and took it off me without a word. He fiddled with it for a while, trying to shield it from the downpour.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Damn thing’s going screwy, it’s not gonna... Nah, it’s gone.”

He passed it back to me, its screen black and unresponsive.

“Do you still have yours?” I asked.

“Nah. First thing they took off me, back in the Sault.”

We perched there for God knows how long, out of the waves’ direct reach but battered by the wind and rain. From time to time I loosed one hand from the rusting metal and tried to flex my fingers, but they grew gradually stiff and numb. The storm rose even higher, churning up the lake. The ship was straining against her anchor, pulling the chain farther from the vertical as she did so. I leaned against Ray, grateful for any chance to rest my aching arms. The drive from Sault Ste. Marie had taken its toll on muscles already weakened by residual nerve damage, and crawling through the hawsehole had wrenched my shoulder further. I was the only shelter Ray had left, though, and his only source of warmth. If there was even a chance an SOS message had made it through, I had to hold on long enough for help to find us.

I felt him shift in my arms.

“Fraser?” he whispered.

“Yes?”

“Forgot my Speedos.”

I snorted in spite of myself, and felt him shake with his own silent laughter, although he was shivering so hard by now that I could barely tell. Shivering was good, I tried to remind myself, a sign that late-stage hypothermia hadn’t yet set in. I wanted to apologise—for quarrelling with him, for getting him into this mess, for whatever else I’d done to him all those years ago and then wiped from my memory—but I knew it was both pointless and far too late. I hugged him closer instead, pressing my lips to his scalp and tasting rain and lake water, blood and algae.

I have no idea how long we clung there like that. Long enough for the cold and the wind’s eerie whistle to begin playing strange tricks on my mind. At one point I startled back to full awareness, wondering whether I’d slept, but I would surely have fallen if I had. I closed my eyes again, resting my cheek on Ray’s shoulder. When at last a distant whine rose above the noise of the storm, I thought for a moment I was back in my nightmares, running full tilt from a speeding truck as it bore down on me.

“Fraser,” Ray whispered, nudging me. “Hey, Fraser! Wake up!”

“What? ’M awake.”

“What’s that noise?”

I blinked hard and twisted round, wincing at the ache in my neck. Far to the north, a tiny dark shape was approaching across the waves. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out its form through the driving rain. It was coming up fast—very fast, in spite of the choppy seas. It had to be a speedboat of some kind. As it drew closer, I could just see the words “Coast Guard” painted on its bows.

“Climb down!” I snapped, unbuckling Ray and reaching with my boots for the next foothold. “Climb down and try to swim!”

He didn’t need telling. He was already in motion, half-clambering, half-sliding down after me. The boat halted a little distance away from us, just far enough to avoid being dashed to pieces against the _Garn Wright’s_ hull, and a figure appeared at its stern. To my amazement, I recognised Ray Vecchio, whom I’d last seen waiting patiently in Thunder Bay. Huskie stood next to him, barking madly.

“Ray!” I yelled, leaning off the chain to wave at him.

“Benny!” he called. “Get your ass down here!”

A blast of spray knocked me off balance, and I tumbled the last few meters into the water, gasping as my head went under. I surfaced quickly, spluttering. I hadn’t thought it was possible to get any colder or wetter, but the chill of the lake water on my scalp was startlingly painful. I heard a splash beside me and saw Ray Kowalski neck-deep in the water, still clutching the anchor chain.

“Swim!” Ray Vecchio yelled at us, flinging a lifebuoy in our direction. He pointed up at the ship, and then flinched and threw his arm over his face as a searchlight swept across him.

There was a flash of white fur and another splash: Huskie had leapt into the water and was paddling towards us. I grabbed Ray Kowalski by his armpit and waistband and started towing him bodily towards the lifebuoy.

“Kick!” I gasped. “Kick your legs, Ray.” But he was already kicking out wildly, his legs striking mine. When Huskie reached us, he slung one arm round her, still flailing desperately with the other. Several searchlights were playing over us by now, slanting down through the rain. I ducked pointlessly as a shot rang out, then another. A whole volley of gunfire broke up the water just ahead of us, and the lifebuoy exploded into fragments.

“Keep kicking,” I panted, shoving the pieces out of our way. “Almost there.”

We reached the boat at last, gasping for breath. Ray Vecchio was crouched at its stern, flinching at every gunshot. He dragged Ray Kowalski out of the water, dumped him on deck, and ran straight back into the cabin to gun the engine. Huskie hauled herself out and shook the water from her fur. I followed her, grabbed Ray, and shoved him through the hatchway, slamming the cabin door behind us just as a bullet smashed its window.

We took off at top speed, the gunfire around us deafening. Another lucky shot punctured the cabin roof, tearing a hole in the panelling. Then another bang, and another. I ducked, expecting to get hit any moment, but the Coast Guard boat was immensely powerful for its size and within a few more shots we’d hurtled out of range.

I collapsed next to Ray Kowalski on the nearest locker, breathing hard. There was no fresh blood on either of us; we hadn’t been hit. Ray Vecchio glanced back at us from the wheel.

“You guys okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ray Kowalski gasped. He coughed and wiped his mouth on his sodden sleeve. “Uh, nice boat.”

“Thanks.”

“You got a radio?”

“Yeah.”

“Then call the police on it!” Ray demanded, hauling himself back upright. “Get them out here, tell them there’s stuff on that boat they’re gonna want to find. Wait, give it here, I’ll do it.”

He got to his feet and lurched towards the bridge. Ray Vecchio fended him off with one hand and spun the wheel with the other, turning the little vessel just in time to meet a giant wave head-on.

“Don’t touch that!” he said. “Just gimme a minute, okay? We’re getting swamped here!”

I took Ray Kowalski’s arm and tugged him away. “It can wait a minute, Ray,” I said. “No one’s going to come out in this, anyway.”

_“Call_ them!” he snapped over my shoulder, scowling, but he let me pull him back to the locker.

“Jesus, impatient much?” Ray Vecchio muttered. He held the wheel steady until there was a break in the waves and then reached for the radio, but before he could touch it, his phone buzzed instead. He scrabbled in his pocket for it.

“Hello?” he said. “Maggie? Hey, calm down! Yeah, I got him here. Yeah, he’s fine, I swear.” He held up the phone. “Tell her you’re fine, Benny.”

“I’m fine,” I called. It wasn’t technically a lie. I was soaked through and half-frozen, yes, but I hadn’t gotten shot or gotten anyone else shot, which in the circumstances felt like an achievement.

“See, he’s fine,” Ray said. “Wait, he sent what? He did? Uh, no, he’s not kidding. No, you gotta call it in. Yeah, it’s a lake freighter called the _Garn Wright,_ in Lake Superior, a few miles off of Silver Islet. As far as I know, yeah. Big storm out here, no one’s coming out in this. Tell them we got ex-FBI agent McLeod with us too. McLeod. Uh-huh.” The boat lurched, throwing him almost off his feet, but he steadied himself on the instrument panel, keeping the phone clamped to his ear. “Okay, you do that. Oh, by the way, Maggie, can you tell the Coast Guard I stole their boat? Yeah, no, still not kidding. Sorry. We should be back in Silver Islet in a half hour, maybe. Yeah. Thanks, Maggie, I owe you.”

He hung up and glared at me.

“So, I got your text,” he said.

Ray Kowalski raised his hand. “Uh, that was me, borrowing his phone.”

“Hmm. _‘SOS’_, huh? Real descriptive.”

“Yeah, well, I was in kind of a hurry, plus I had ABBA on the brain.”

Ray Vecchio sniffed. “Well, the words didn’t matter. Dewey just needed a text to get the coordinates off of. He passed them to me, and I acquired a boat that was sitting around doing nothing. Didn’t expect to find you guys playing limpets on the anchor chain, but hey, whatever works for you.” He spun the wheel again. “Benny, you’re shaking like a leaf. Check that locker. There should be some towels and dry clothes in there.”

Ray Kowalski and I staggered back to our feet, sliding in the puddle we’d left on the planking. The boat was heaving so hard in the swell that we could barely keep our balance. How Ray Vecchio managed it so casually, I couldn’t tell. Abandoning the attempt, I crouched on the decking and reached into the locker. I passed a towel to Ray, who gave his face and hair a perfunctory scrub before kneeling next to me.

“Clothes off,” he said, tugging at my jacket.

“Wait!” I said, remembering the paperwork and drug sample in my pocket. It came out as a soggy, amorphous mess. “Ah. It seems to be rather the worse for wear.”

Ray snickered. “Aren’t we all?”

He fished a brand-new sweatshirt from the locker, unwrapped it, and used its plastic packaging to wrap the wad of paper before setting it aside on the locker. We dried ourselves and changed into fresh clothing, Ray doing the buttons and zips for both of us, as my fingers were too numb to manage them. I caught a few glimpses of bruising on his torso, but he seemed to be moving okay, nothing broken.

Ray Vecchio cleared his throat and glanced in Ray Kowalski’s direction. “So, uh, Maggie said Ben sent her a bunch of photos from the ship. I take it that was you.”

“Yeah,” Ray Kowalski said. “His phone was dying, so I had to send them somewhere, and her name was in there. Plus we’re in Canada, right? So it’s her jurisdiction.”

Ray Vecchio checked the radar screen. “Uh, yeah, just about. A few miles north of the border. She’s pretty mad about it, in case you couldn’t tell. Got back from patrol and found her inbox crammed with pictures of guns and drug shipments. She thought it was a hoax.”

Ray Kowalski laughed. “Yeah, not a hoax. All that shit’ll be overboard by the time anyone swoops, but Fraser caught it all in Technicolor. You know what you should do? Call her back, get them to hit the _Adam B. Russ_ on the Detroit run. Same outfit, different boat, and I bet there’s a shipment on her.”

Ray Vecchio caught up his phone again, his eyes gleaming. “The _Adam B. Russ?”_

“Yup, pretty sure. She was due southbound out of the Sault about ten last night, so she’ll still be en route to Port Huron.”

Ray Vecchio tapped the phone and held it to his ear. “I’ll get the Mounties on it,” he said. “Mounties, port authorities, DEA, whatever it takes. We’ll catch the bastards yet.”


	7. Chapter 7

A noise like a gunshot echoed round the FBI lobby, and I leapt to my feet, reaching automatically for the side weapon I hadn’t carried in years. A few meters away, an agent in a tailored pantsuit stooped to pick up the folder she’d dropped. I froze, breathing hard. A folder. Just a folder. No one was in danger, no one in need of rescue. The passersby hadn’t even noticed anything.

I sat back down on the cold stone bench, bowing my head, grateful for Huskie’s reassuring presence as she pressed against my legs. We’d been waiting in the lobby of the FBI’s Chicago field office all morning, my volume of poetry lying untouched beside me on the bench. I’d grown lazy the past few days, no longer bothering to decipher print when I could listen to Ray Kowalski read aloud for me instead in that soft, hesitant voice I was coming to know so well. The Bureau would be done with him soon, I told myself. Leaning down, I whispered the same to Huskie, who wagged her tail Diefenbaker-fashion as if she understood.

Behind the plate-glass doors to our left, cars and taxis were coming and going, disgorging suit-clad agents and personnel from various law enforcement agencies. Great wooden doors to the right led onward into the main building, and the lobby was echoing with the quiet tap of footsteps on marble, underlain with the barely audible hiss of climate control.

Just outside, next to the strip of manicured flowerbeds, a pigeon was strutting and cooing to his mate, his chest puffed out ludicrously. Huskie had spotted them too. Her eyes went wide and her ears swivelled forward.

“Don’t even think about it,” I told her. “They’re on the other side of the glass. Bulletproof FBI glass. You can’t get to them.”

She whined, glancing back and forth between me and the birds, her whole body straining towards them even as her paws stayed rooted to the spot.

“I mean it,” I warned. “No more chasing.”

“You’re one to talk,” a familiar voice said behind me. One of the inner doors closed with a click, and Ray Vecchio sat down beside me, tipping his face to the sunlight.

“Hello, Ray.” I smiled at him as he donned his shades. “Have they finished with your statements?”

“Yeah, for now. And they finally released my car, so I’m gonna head home before they change their minds. They’re gonna have their hands full with the Port Huron raids, anyway. Firearms, narcotics, whole shipping containers’ worth of trace evidence to run through the labs. All the same kind of stuff McLeod found Sidorczuk’s crew stockpiling in Sault Ste. Marie, only now those assholes got every law enforcement agency in two countries on their backs, instead of one guy they can beat up and kidnap.”

I hugged Huskie closer, remembering the marks I’d seen on Ray Kowalski’s body when he’d stripped off his t-shirt on the Coast Guard boat. When the Ontario police finally released us, we’d staggered to the nearest motel and fallen asleep still half-dressed, and it hadn’t been until morning that I realised quite how badly beaten he’d been.

“The more hard evidence they can get against Sidorczuk, the better,” I said. “Have they persuaded him to make any kind of statement yet?”

“Nah, he’s pleading the Fifth, but now that we got him by the short and curlies, guys who wouldn’t have said boo to him are suddenly getting real cooperative. Guys like that, they can smell blood in the water.” Ray paused. “Benny, there’s something else I gotta tell you. Something I’d rather you heard from me than the Feds.”

I took a deep breath of the recycled air, feeling its chill spread through my chest. “Very well.”

“They got an old lieutenant of Sidorczuk’s on a plea bargain, and he says sometime around the year 2000 the boss ordered him to scare off a cop who’d been sniffing around their operation in the Sault.”

I felt a muscle in my jaw twitch and clenched down hard to stop it. “By which he means me?”

“Yeah, he said the guy was plain-clothes RCMP, so it must’ve been you. He claims he was just tailing you, making sure you left town empty-handed.”

“Tailing or tail_gating?”_

Ray spread his hands wide. “They offered him a plea bargain, not immunity, so he’s not gonna admit to being a cop killer or even a wannabe cop killer. He says he was following your truck at a nice safe distance and saw you crash, so he stopped to try and help, being the fine upstanding citizen he is. He didn’t see any movement in the cab, just a whole lot of blood, so he got scared and hightailed it, assuming you were dead.”

I rubbed at my arm where the wasted muscle had suddenly begun to ache. Everyone who’d seen the crash scene photographs had said it was a miracle I’d survived more or less intact. I didn’t want to think how much of the blood must have been Diefenbaker’s.

“I take it that when this helpful fellow discovered I was alive but brain damaged, he told Sidorczuk I wasn’t a threat anymore,” I said.

“Exactly. Job done. Not that he was gonna put it like that, not once he’d lawyered up, but that’s the gist.”

“Did he tell the investigators anything about what I was doing there in the first place? What I’d found out, what led me there?”

Ray shook his head. “Just that you were making a nuisance of yourself. If I had to guess, I’d say you were trying to protect McLeod. He was the one who’d gotten himself mixed up in all that business in the first place, back when he worked for the Bureau. Can’t prove it, though.”

I stared at the reflections on the glass walls, trying to think it through. If I’d somehow discovered Ray Kowalski’s real identity all those years ago, I must have realised the gangs he’d infiltrated could track him down too. Maybe I’d been trying to neutralise the threat to him all along.

“I doubt we’re ever gonna know,” Ray Vecchio said. “On the plus side, now that we’ve nailed these guys, he’s finally in the clear. He can get his life back. Assuming, y’know, he _has_ a life.”

“Hmm. And my car crash will remain classed as an accident?”

“Officially, yeah. I wish I could change that for you, Benny, I really do, but I can’t.” Ray jerked his head back toward the main building. “Try telling that to McLeod, though. He’s still in there, trying to browbeat the interrogation team into giving him ten minutes alone with the guy.”

“He is?” I asked, starting to get up. “Had I better...?”

“Nah, leave it. There’s no way they’ll let him. You might as well leave him to blow off steam, let him yell at them instead of us. What about you? Are _you_ okay?”

I thought about it before nodding slowly. There was no real anger left amongst my emotions; I wasn’t sure there had ever been. On Ray Kowalski’s behalf, yes, now that I understood what he’d gone through, but not for my own sake. I’d just wanted to know the truth. Wanted to know I wasn’t crazy.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so, yes. I think I’ve found what I needed to.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured.” Ray Vecchio shot me a sly grin. “Speaking of which, are you and him doing okay? You manage to sort things out between you?”

“To some extent. It’s a work in progress, you might say.”

“Complicated, huh?” Ray got to his feet, rubbing his spine. “Yeah, life’s complicated. I’m gonna go reclaim my car. You need a ride?”

I tugged at Huskie’s ears, and she laid her chin on my knee. “Thank you, but I think I’ll wait for Ray.”

“Okay. Uh...you do know that’s not his real name, right?”

“People keep telling me that, yes. They seem to think I have amnesia or something.”

“Yeah, yeah. Never heard that one before.” Ray headed for the glass doors, spinning his keychain idly round one finger, but at the last moment he turned back. “Hey, don’t forget, dinner at my place, seven o’clock tomorrow. Frannie’s making lasagna. Bring McLeod, okay?”

I raised a hand in salute. “Duly noted. Text him with the time, and we’ll be there.”

* * *

Ray Kowalski woke up early in the mornings, but seldom as early as I did. I loved watching him sleep, the way his eyelids twitched as he dreamed, the way consciousness stole gradually over him. Some days we’d spend all morning in bed, until hunger eventually drove us down to the kitchen. Other days he had a schedule to keep, one I could never quite grasp.

This morning I lay as still as I could in spite of all temptations to the contrary, until the soft chime of his new cell phone told me it was late enough to nudge him awake.

“Hey,” he mumbled, stretching lazily against me. “What time is it?”

“Early,” I assured him, pulling the sheet aside where it had gotten tangled around our legs. “Very early.”

Ray laughed, right in the middle of a jaw-breaking yawn. “Mm. Says the man who can’t count.”

“Very early,” I repeated, tugging him closer and running my nails lightly down his back. He groaned, as I knew he would, and pushed against me.

“You’re such a liar,” he muttered, his breath warm on my neck. “C’mere, liar.”

Of all the things I’d forgotten I loved, sleepy morning sex had to be my favourite. And yes, I liked to take my time. When at last Ray levered himself up from his post-coital lassitude to check the bedside clock, it was late enough to make him swear. He slumped back down onto my chest, sliding a little against the damp skin. He kissed me there, his fingers tracing lightly down my ribs, but then broke off.

“You’re killin’ me here, Frase,” he said. “I gotta get to work.”

“There’s plenty of time,” I said, with a half-hearted attempt to sound convincing.

“Nice try. Are you riding with me in the van again today?”

I ran my fingers through the softness of his hair, letting it fall at random angles so that it glinted silver and gold in the slanting light. “Will it get you home any sooner?”

“Yeah, if you stop listening to customers’ entire life stories. Look at it this way: the more you cut ’em short, the sooner we can get back.”

I sighed and lay back on the pillows. “That sounds like excellent time management advice, Ray.”

“Mm.” He got up, stretching wide, and bent to retrieve his clothes. There’s a real generous benefits package, too.”

“There is?”

“Yup. A lunch hour in a van with no windows.”

“Ah,” I said, sitting up again. “Gainful employment it is, then.”

Once the bathroom was free, I showered and put on some of the new clothes I’d bought earlier in the week. I’d been staying at Ray’s place long enough for his morning rituals to have become as familiar as they must once have been: his bleariness on waking, his mumbled replies and clumsy kisses—more than just kisses, if he didn’t have to rush out to work. Then he’d shower and head for the kitchen, and the scent of freshly brewed coffee would fill the house.

I followed him downstairs now and leaned against the counter, watching him pour beans into the grinder and waiting for the right opportunity to say the words that had been running on a loop in my head since waking. I knew perfectly well that too much time had gone by, that there were too many things I couldn’t fix, too much damage that couldn’t be undone by words alone, but I had to say them anyway. I took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Ray.”

“Why?” he asked, without looking up. “What for?”

“I don’t know. Everything. Everything I did that made you feel you had to lie to me and go on lying.”

He huffed out a breath, shaking his head. “Shit, Fraser, it’s not... You really wanna talk about this?”

“I think I have to, yes.”

_“Now?”_

“Yes.”

“Fuck. It’s...” He stared blankly down at the coffee machine for a long time. “Look, I didn’t ever wanna lie to you, you get that, right? Not then, not now. I just, I wanted you back, that’s all. I wanted all the stuff you couldn’t remember, because we _had_ all that, and then we didn’t, and it was so fucking unfair. It was unfair the first time round, and then when you couldn’t even remember…” He shoved the glass coffee pot into place, making it clatter. “And I couldn’t tell you any of it! What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, by the way, you used to sleep in my bed, not on my couch’? You didn’t even know who I was! You barely know now!”

I went over to him and wrapped my arms round him from behind, leaning into the crook of his neck, breathing in the half-familiar scent of him.

“I know who you are, Ray. And I’m sorry for what I did.”

He laughed, his ribcage tightening in my grasp. “You’ve changed, you know that? The old Fraser woulda never said sorry. And you, you don’t even know what you’re apologising _for.”_

“Some of it, no, there’s no way I can know. But I’m truly sorry it took me this long to come looking for you.”

He hummed in reply, a wordless sound I could feel vibrating through my own chest. I let the silence draw out for a while and then nudged him.

“Ray?”

“Yeah?”

“When you left—the first time, I mean, back in Yellowknife—was it really your choice or did I...did I make you go?”

He stiffened. “Doesn’t matter. It’s ancient history.”

“It may not matter now, but I’d like to know the truth all the same.”

He laughed again, a bitter sound. “The truth? You still think that’s a thing? Look, I had to leave. There wasn’t a choice. Maybe, yeah, you picked a fight to make it easier for me to go, but I was too busy being mad at you to figure that out till afterwards. So that’s it, that’s what happened. You need a signed statement?”

“Ray...”

“Sorry, I’m sorry, but it’s just, you’d probably see it different, only you don’t, you can’t. And that’s not fucking fair, and it’s never gonna be. I don’t know what else to say.”

We stood there a while longer, his shirt warm against my lips as I felt him gradually relax. At last he pulled loose and turned to face me.

“Fuck it, can we just forget the past? We—” He broke off, wincing. “Shit, sorry, stupid thing to say.”

“No, you’re right,” I said. “A clean slate sounds like a good idea. And I apologise for having freaked out at you back in Sault Ste. Marie.”

“Nah, s’okay. I shoulda seen it coming. You freaked out the first time, too.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. My fault, though, ’cause I kinda jumped you. I thought you were flirting, turned out you were just being polite.”

“Ah,” I said, trying not to smile. “I take it we figured things out in the end.”

“Yeah. We always figure things out in the end.”

“So are we...?”

He nodded. “I think.”

“Good. Excellent.” I caught his eye, and he broke into a grin.

“It’s not gonna be easy, though,” he said. “I got kind of a temper. You probably figured that out by now.”

“Well, at least I’m aware of that from the outset.”

“Hm. And you, you’re a paranoid liability, to quote your best buddy.”

“Ah. He might be right. Are you still willing to take me on?”

“Dunno, maybe. But...”

“But what?”

Ray paused long enough to take a pair of mugs down from the cupboard, pour the coffee, and hand one of them to me. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

The drink lurched in my mug, almost spilling. I placed it back on the counter. “Yes. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to, sooner or later.”

He nodded, turning away. “’Cause you’re on a temporary visa here.”

“A tourist visa, yes.”

“And you’re not gonna outstay it.”

I hesitated a moment, but there was only one answer to that. “We may no longer be officers of the law, Ray, but we’re still duty-bound to uphold it.”

“Yeah. Plus I’m guessing you miss your kids.”

“I do,” I admitted. “I miss them a great deal. It’s been a long time. It feels like a long time, anyway.”

He nodded again, his shoulders hunched. “Couple weeks, but yeah, that’s fair.”

“I’ll come back,” I said quickly. “If you’ll have me, I mean. I’ll come and stay as often as Immigration regulations permit. And perhaps you could visit me in Inuvik, too, if your work allows.”

“Could do,” he said, staring down at his coffee. “Or we could just go back to Plan A.”

“Plan A?”

“Yeah, y’know, fuck the job. You, me, log cabin in the wilderness.”

“Would you want that?” I asked, surprised.

“Doesn’t have to be an actual cabin, Frase.” He looked up, his expression strangely twisted. “Short version: you asked me, I said yes.”

“I did? I mean, I do, I would! Of course I would! Very much so, if you would.”

He shrugged casually, although I could see the tension in him. “Not much keeping me here. We’d need to get our own place, though, ’cause, no offence, but I’m not moving in with your sister.”

“No, of course not,” I agreed hurriedly, before he could think better of his offer. “There are plenty of other options. Inuvik always has a certain amount of spare housing available, if you’d be willing to live there. In fact, there’s a place backing right onto our yard that’s been vacant for a while. I could ask Stuart whether...” I stopped as another thought struck me. “But wouldn’t you have visa issues of your own, if you wanted to move to Canada?”

“Uh, yeah, about that...there’s one more thing I gotta tell you. Don’t freak out, okay?”

“Very well,” I said, wincing internally. “I’ll try not to.”

“Okay, so I told you I grew up in Chicago, right?”

“I don’t recall, but I expect you did, yes.”

“Yeah, and that was technically true, ’cause my dad was American and we moved here when I was a kid. But I was born in Alberta, so I got dual citizenship, so no problem with visas.”

“You’re _Canadian?”_

“Um, yeah, kinda.” He was laughing, but he had the grace to look a little ashamed too.

“Oh. I don’t suppose you ever told me that.”

“Nah. It didn’t fit with the cover story, plus you never asked. A whole lotta stuff you never asked.”

I blinked hard. “Well, I...I guess it would explain a few things.”

“So we’re good, right?” he said eagerly. “It’s not a deal breaker?”

“Hmm,” I said, pretending to consider this. “Are you sure that’s everything? You’re not going to announce at some point that you’re the long-lost crown prince of Ruritania?”

“Yeah, no, I doubt it. I don’t even speak Ruritanian.”

I laughed before I could stop myself, and leaned close to kiss him. “Fine, but no more surprises. You promise?”

He grinned at me, his eyes alight with devilry.

“Absolutely, a hundred percent. You can trust me, Fraser. I don’t even know how to lie.”

********************************************

You are cordially invited to the wedding of

Benton Fraser & J. Stanley “Ray” McLeod

at the Inuvik Community Centre

on Saturday 25th October 2008.

All welcome!

********************************************

**Author's Note:**

> _And it's a long way down_  
_It's a long way down_  
_It's a long way down to the place where we started from._  
\-- Sarah McLachlan, Ice Cream


End file.
